Ministry

Celibate Living in a Sex-Obsessed Society

Driving home from another ministry excursion, I pass billboard after billboard saying there are sex shops nearby. With each sighting, my stomach turns with sickness, my face falls into a frown. I am tempted to ignore the anguish, to shield my thoughts, to avoid that which feels judgmental and ugly within me. Instead, I take […]

You Were Made On Purpose

The first time I read the description of the ENFP in the Meyers Briggs personality test I took, I cried. Gregarious, full of energy, passionate, an ability to inspire others, I knew who they were talking about because I was who they were talking about. I cried because if I was one of 16 types […]

The Enneagram is a Jerk

I remember my first experience with the Enneagram. A few friends had been talking about it consistently and they encouraged me to take the test myself. I completed the quiz, looked up my number, and began to read. I found myself scoffing and huffing more with every page I read, until I finally threw the […]

Hope Sings. Arrebato.

It’s Wednesday, and on a hill in San Tomás, Guatemala, hope can be heard. It’s faint at first, like the delicate rustling of trees responding to the touch of a spring breeze. If you close your eyes and lean in, the melody grows clearer. Rustling becomes wind chimes that hint to a tune your heart […]

Rescued and Redeemed

I saw his grizzled face, breadcrumbs around his dry mouth, as he offered a smile that looked genuinely happy to see me. I returned the smile that probably showed more concern than joy. He didn’t look well, not like the last time I saw him. He was much thinner, unkempt, but his eyes eager to […]

Breakfast Casseroles…Again?

Twelve times a year I make breakfast casseroles. They’re my monthly contribution to the local homeless shelter. But this week, I wondered (read: grumbled) how it could possibly be time make casseroles again. It seemed like I was just buying eggs, cheese, sausage, hash browns, and baking tins last week. The twelve commitments were becoming […]

Turning Compassion Inward

Amy sat with me on my screened porch at the lake, listening the way only a woman who has spent thirty years as a cloistered nun in a monastery, then three more years training to be a therapist, can listen. “You have compassion fatigue,” she said. “What?” I asked. “There’s an actual name for this? […]

Go to Jail

Ten years ago, I sat around a table with a group of six girls, trying to teach them creative writing. We shared poetry, short stories, and personal memoirs. I wasn’t that much older than them, and yet our worlds were oceans apart. For we sat in the library of a local juvenile correctional facility, and […]

The Persistence

The sound can be heard along the backroads of Aizawl, a hillside village in Mizoram, India—the clacking rhythm that hints of life inside hollowed-out buildings with broken windows and lockless doors. Cooled only by the shade of jackfruit trees, Burmese refugees work to provide for their families, surviving on pennies per day. Liana sits inside […]

Cooking and the Feeding of Our Souls

I’m becoming my mother. Whenever she comes to visit us, her greatest ambition is to cook for our family. She asks which of her Korean homemade dishes we’d like to eat, and even prior to her stay she prepares in advance by shopping for groceries we can’t find locally. She’s a lady on a mission. […]