When Narrow Bends Wide

“Devil’s Backbone Trail?” I smirked to myself. How strange the ink read on the church bulletin, announcing the hike. “How ironically appropriate.” A gentle wind scurries past us at the trail head, whispering rumors of spring. She stirs drowsy-eyed in a valley that is barely awake. We tread lightly, least we summon the slumbering rattlesnakes […]

Tasting Beauty in the Suburbs

Flashback Friday: This post was originally published on May 10, 2016. It had been a string of days with too much noise—me, children, politics, social media—so I took to the neighborhood walking paths to work things out in my body, while my husband constructed things out of wood (his own way of working things out). I […]

Are We Nearly There Yet?

 Are we nearly there yet: it’s the phrase dreaded by parents everywhere. Growing up in England, I spent much of my vacations trailing up and down mountains in the Lake District and North Wales. Being the eldest of three – and having been raised to be fiercely competitive – I was desperate to make each […]

Renewal Is All Around Us

Not a day goes by without me thinking, “I’d rather be stacking shelves in a grocery shop!” I am primary school teacher, you see. At times, the job can be extremely stressful, but through it I get to experience the magic of having direct access to God’s power to restore and renew. How does that […]

Do We Idolize the Brokenness?

I was 17 and living in my small town with two stoplights when I declared I wanted to grow up and become an urban missionary. And I was 19 when I left college to spend a year serving in downtown Atlanta. It was a crash course on life in the margins, and I was hooked. […]

The Restoration We Find through Confession

Confession has never been a feel-good word to me. I grew up in a Korean Presbyterian church, so confession often meant something along the lines of punishment, sinner, dirty, shame. Shame for the things we had done. Shame for the ways we had failed. Shame for not being able to overcome. Shame for even feeling […]

For When I Am Yearning

There is a bridal portrait, 8 ½x11 in a crackled frame that sits atop my husband’s dresser in our bedroom. In it, I am twenty years old, blonde hair, shock white smile, blue eyes glistening at the hope of the future. My veil spills out all around me and though I am covered in a […]

Where Stories Intersect

  I wouldn’t call us close friends. We had gone to school together our entire childhood. I remember her easygoing attitude, the big grin and contagious laugh. We had mutual friends, sat in some of the same classes and attended a lot of sleepovers together. Still, as adults our lives went in different directions and […]

When I Rejected God’s Forgiveness

“Hi, I’m Miah, and I struggle with guilt and shame.” Sometimes restoration has to start at the very bottom of the muck. For as long as I could remember, I struggled with guilt and shame. This was probably a combination of perfectionism, fundamentalism, and a need to please others. Many days (and nights) were spent […]

Tasting Beauty in the Suburbs

Flashback Friday: This post was originally published on May 10, 2016. It had been a string of days with too much noise—me, children, politics, social media—so I took to the neighborhood walking paths to work things out in my body, while my husband constructed things out of wood (his own way of working things out). I […]

Killing Off the Mythos of America

“There is no substitute for the America that each and every one of us loves with all of our heart, that we believe in with all of our heart and that together we will restore as a shining city on the hill for every generation to come.” – Ted Cruz “The fact that I have […]

I’m Ready to Lighten the Heck Up

My first time in any serious therapy, my counselor told me I was depressed. I laughed. It was kind of high-pitched, as if someone had twisted a treble knob too tight. “I’m not depressed,” I tittered. “I’m the happiest person I know! I’m happy all the time!” Thinking back to my cockeyed optimism, I wince, […]

The Curious Blessing of Rejection

Ten years ago, in 2006, I was rejected by a publisher.  It went like this: after four years of student ministry and thinking about a post-modern culture, I had an idea for a book that explored characteristics of student ministry in the context of postmodernism – a sort of analytical, practical, theological-yet-readable sort of book. […]

Palms Up

I just put my daughter into an ambulance. Strapped in like a caged animal who cannot escape the war roaming inside her head. The battle that wages for her control of her life. Inhale. Blood stained sheets on the bottom bunk, clinging to the safety that slips between my fingers like sand. Hair matted down […]