Introducing our newest monthly contributor, Rozella White!! Rozella Haydée is my name. It comes from both my grandmothers, women of faith, who sacrificed greatly for their families. One was the great-granddaughter of slaves, who despite hardships remains steadfast, upbeat and gives LOVE. The other, an immigrant with roots in three countries, was an artist committed […]
Career
When Your Birth is the Slow Kind
I have a book that I’ve been writing for a thousand years. (Are you really a thousand years old, you ask? Is that unnecessary hyperbole?) Oh, hush. I am. I must be, because I am quite sure that this book has taken me that long. A thousand years, yesterday. That makes me a thousand and a day, today. […]
Emmanuel and Showing Up
The first few days of Advent, I felt irrationally angry. I tried to call it irritable or easily annoyed, but when I sat down to dig through it all what I found was anger. Advent is an invitation to the waiting, and frankly, I would like to decline. No thanks. Can’t come. Wish I could […]
Freedom
It was in that Bible study that I realized I was not free. We were eight couples, all of us fresh into our time as expats in Singapore, struggling to find our footing in what we jokingly called “Fantasy Island.” That group was a lifeline in the midst of our turbulent transition to a new […]
Saying Good-Bye-My “Ifs” and My “Onlys”
Autumn is in full chorus. Leaves shaded in hues of yellow-limes, tangerine-reds, black-purple-plum are bursting in symphony against the backdrop of November gray. And I can’t get enough of their beauty, diversity and surrender—I am jealous for each leaf’s resolve. Looking at the “burning bush” in front of me, full abandon is its message. Outstretched […]
Why I Wouldn’t Be Where I Am Without Reality TV
I just had to manually input the word “vlogger” into my spell check. I’m using that word a lot lately. After three years of writing words, on screens, and posting them on blogs, I’ve started monologuing to the camera. For most of my life I would never have dreamed that I would sit in front […]
Surrendering to Communion
“Asking is, at its core, a collaboration.” Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking It only took nine unsubscribes to undo me. I use some software to manage the subscribers to my blog, and if there’s activity—people signing up (yay!) people un-signing up (sigh!), I get an email. Lately, I […]
Wearing the Word Brave
It’s dark in here, I told him, but all the lights in the room are on. It’s the first thing I can think of to explain my knees bouncing and my teeth chattering, even though I’m not cold. I am out of control. I am helpless, at the mercy of my brain. I am utterly […]
Fear Not
I sat there, sipping my mocha, while our daughter rolled a ball across the floor, back and forth, and periodically tried to escape from the little corner we had planted ourselves in, waiting for them to call the flight. I took a picture or two of father and daughter, grinning, holding each other close. And […]
Quit While You Still Love It
A number of my friends are facing a crossroads at the moment asking the same immortal question as The Clash did in 1982: Should I stay or should I go? The pattern, I observe, goes something like this:Move to a new placeSettle into new placeEnjoy the new placeRESTLESSNESS. When I first became a Christian minister […]
Dear Fear, You Are a Mouse
I walked into the bedroom and I knew you were there. I could feel you lurking, waiting to pounce on little hearts. To enter whenever we would give you an opening. So I taught the kids at a very young age to say this: God has not given me a spirit of fear . . […]
Reaching Across the Edges
I kneeled on the blue mat next to Sam’s bed in the skilled-care wing of the senior care facility. My elbows were on the edge of his bed as I leaned forward to hear him better. I felt like one of those old-fashioned needle point pictures of the children praying before bed, “Now I lay […]
This Little Light of Mine . . .
This little light of mine. I’m gonna let it shine. As a girl I sang these words, in a children’s’ choir with our fingers pointed to the sky. Our hands circling. We were the light of the world. And we were to let our lights shine brightly, and constantly for all to see. This little […]
Why I Dreaded My Dream Being Fulfilled
I thought they would be my knightesses in shining armor. A connection had led me to a small female–led company with promises of increasing my non-profit’s capacity. As the founder of a 5-year-old organization, I was relieved to hear that help might be tucked away in the basement of this little home-based business. I unloaded […]
The Disquiet that Calls You Back to the Fire
My grandmother told me she could see their fires at night, dotting the dark rise of the forested bluff as her family’s wagon passed along the dirt road after the summer church revival. She told me you could hear their music, too, the strings weaving their way down the wooded hill. Music like joy, but different from […]
When You Think You’re Too Good for Hope
I used to think of hope as wishes, as little bubbles that floated away from you and popped on the way up to some genie in the sky. Hope seemed ephemeral, insubstantial, the sort of thing you rely on when you’re at your wit’s end. And I made it a point to never be at […]
When We All Just Want to Be Known
Fifty of us invaded their driveway on Tuesday night. Card tables and ice chests and camping chairs decorated the pavement, along with stacks of paper plates and plastic silverware and Red Solo cups. The grill sizzled, red and gray coals in wait for chicken apple sausages and hot dogs from the local butcher. We scrawled […]
Authentic Living is Hard
You know I am from the Midwest because when you ask me how I am, I answer you. This is, as my children’s minister pointed out to me, a trait I have passed on to my girls. Lucky for the Norman girls, she finds us charming. Don’t ask us how we are if you don’t […]