It’s easy to neglect our spouses during the crazy that is COVID-19. Join Ashley Hales as she suggests 5 ways to stay married. They’re gentle reminders to lovingly tend and care for your spouse and marriage.
Mental Health
Every Anxious Thought
Editor’s Note: Words fail, we find, in these extraordinary days. We stumble to enunciate this new life with them. Often, we have no words—even for God. Twenty writers and ministry leaders (Mudroom sisters included) joined together to offer theirs. The Pandemic Prayerbook: A Pray-at-Home Guide for the Corona Crisis is a collection of 30 prayers […]
To My High-Spirited Daughter This Epiphany
This isn’t the way the world’s supposed to be. You feel that. It’s Epiphany but you’re still saying “Maranatha” like it’s Advent. You want Jesus to come back and make things right. Make math as easy to perceive as your classmates do. Make your body able to control your emotions. Epiphany for you is a […]
Excerpt from A Prayer for Orion by Katherine James
Editor’s Note: Kate James has written a vibrant memoir about her son’s battle with heroin, and her own experience during that time. This is an important book and we highly recommend it. Kate generously allowed us to use an excerpt today as her book launches! Few parents can say the word heroin. It took me […]
My Ricocheting Heart
Today, the simple gray sock I hold in my hand becomes my new best friend. It must be magic; because here I am, just minding my own business, moving through this mundane laundry chore, when I come across this sock and feel it unlock a door deep within me. I am suddenly slingshotted back in […]
Muddy-Handed Hope
He’s seven now. But I often remember him as the two-year-old who looked into my catatonic eyes. I have a hard time forgetting what this little one must have felt when I went crazy. Because Grace is real and memory imperfect, his little mind has no recollection of when I had to enter the mental […]
Fear Knot
I roll along in silence between the sterile, white walls. Hospitals are like that—a bizarre blend of fear, hope, and rubbing alcohol. My brain spins in circles like the wheels on the chair beneath me. I ruminate on the blood, the pain, and the uncertainty of a happy ending. The knot cinches up tight in […]
Hello, I’m Weak
“You may want to consider going on antidepressants,” my counselor says at the end of session. My eyes widen in shock and fear. And shame. Lots of shame. This bomb continues to reverberate in me as I leave. I have no problems with people taking antidepressants. I have many family members who do and I’ve […]
Why Bad Self-Care Is a Kind of Sin
“This author really pissed me off,” I told my husband the other day. I brandished a book called Soon: An Overdue History of Procrastination, by Andrew Santella. My anger surprised my husband. He enjoys a heated debate while I tend to shy away from black-and-white argument. But this book? I ranted about it for fifteen […]
Peace in the Time of My Storms
“I trusted God as much as I believed possible, trusting more in my misplaced confidence in my own capacity to have cost me dearly.
What did I learn? God is sovereign; I am an idiot.”
Invocation to the Night I Drowned
I am the panic attack that upended your entire life. I am the storm you could never remember seeing but always felt. I am removing this identity from you like I have many times before. I am going to grow in you yet a new one as I have always done before. I am not […]
Hope and Healing for the Sexually Broken
A heads up: this post is about pornography, lust, masturbation, and sexual orientation, but more importantly it’s about a woman calling out to God in her desperate need and God answering her with Himself. Before you read it, please remember something that normally goes without saying: people have the right to share their lived experiences, […]
When I Am Bipolar
I hold the small red pill between my thumb and forefinger. It’s miniscule. Maybe a third the size of a breath mint. I’ve already taken my antidepressant faithfully, as I always do. I habitually gulp down the rest of my pills but this one I take last, because it’s so small. There was the time […]
Your Marriage Doesn’t Have to Look Like Anyone Else’s
I think my picture of what marriage would look like was some combination of my parents’ marriage and every 1990’s rom-com I’d ever seen. We’d have clear his-and-hers roles based on how my parents did everything, because hey, it’s still working for them, and we’d cuddle every night and fall asleep with our arms and […]
Coloring In Christmas With My Favorite Things
Raindrops on rooftops and polka dot mittens Bright lights that flicker and Big Momma’s kitchen Brown chorus angels whose robes look like wings These are a few of my favorite things. Buttermilk cornbread and crisp chicken drumsticks Hotels with stairwells and greens that are handpicked Wildflowers that spread in dry deserts I’ve seen These […]
A Dark Postpartum Night
It’s the nights I dread most. An hour after midnight, my husband–who’s been with baby in the nursery since 10 p.m.– opens the door, enters our bedroom, and gently shakes my foot to wake me up. But I’m already awake. I’m always awake. The baby is crying as if he hadn’t just eaten a […]
The Second Journey: A Call at Midlife
“I have been seized by the power of a great affection.” ~Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-up, and Burnt Out Midlife crisis. It’s like a version of adolescence, only older. As my 50th birthday quickly approaches, I can attest to the unpredictable hormone changes, body shifts and mooood swwiiinnggs. […]
Prayer Requests Make Me Anxious
I don’t think I have a normal reaction to prayer requests. Rather than making me want to go pray, they tend to edge me towards hyperventilation. Take the other day in my small group. There were some doozy requests. People suffering from the death of a spouse, cancer, job loss, financial holes, a risky and […]