I used to curl up on the bathroom floor the day my period started. I wanted the cool hardness to counter my writhing body, and I’d lay there for hours, uninterested in books or television, until the pain calmed. The blood and the discomfort seemed unjust then, and now, for me, and especially for women […]
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 […]
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 […]
Editor’s Note on “The Magi:” A dear friend recently confided that she loves the Season of Epiphany (beginning in early January) but secretly dreads its first Sunday. Just as Christmas is neatly tucked away, her church musters up one last pageant to remember the Magi. Far from the orchestrated order and beauty of Advent’s Nativity […]
Epiphanies in my 20s looked like deep thought and deep feeling, unattached from the tethering forces of family, place, role, or life stage. They were found in the misty ocean air walking alone, contemplating the state of the world and the state of my soul. It all felt a bit more tumultuous then and that […]
Sabbath, rest, learning to do less requires trust. It requires faith that declares today is not all we have, this is not the end, and better-rested means better equipped.
I went through three Advent calendars this year. The chocolate kind; maybe it was four. One was my daughter’s. I was forgiven upon upgrading it to a higher-caliber chocolate one. Eventually I ate that too, and we settled out of court. Psychoanalysis of this penchant leads me down infinite rabbit trails, so I’m sticking with […]
For National Poetry Month we’re reposting this amazing poem by Anita Scott. #poetrylife Be the bellows of my soul. Be the bellows in my soul. Be the push and the blow that reconciles gaining with letting go, releasing while receiving. Be the reason that hope lives in tears. Be the One who […]
I pull the book a tad bit closer, at first. Then, instinctually, I extend my arm out to its full length and tilt the book towards the light. I repeat this process with as much subtlety as possible but the truth is evident. My eyes are struggling. I am no longer able to read, hour […]
I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about mortality—specifically, my own. Perhaps it’s because my husband is in his mid-forties now and his mind is grappling with aging and ageism in his career field. Maybe it’s his sudden concern for our future, for what legacy he’s leaving behind for our sons. Perhaps it’s because I […]
I didn’t win the lottery last week. I know. I was surprised too. I mean, I knew logically that I wasn’t going to win. But if I am honest, in the messiest parts of myself (and isn’t that what the Mudroom is for?) I think I honestly believed I was going to win. Even though […]
Growing up in and around New Orleans, I celebrated January 6 as the opening of carnival season, the several weeks of hedonism that lead up to Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, which precedes Ash Wednesday and the long, bleak penances of Lent. We went to church, and we ate a king cake, a ring of sweet […]
The thing about a revelation is, it’s something you didn’t know before. If you were already clued in on this, you should have told me, because I totally missed the memo. Knowledge is my thing. It’s, like, my thing. If I want to accomplish something, or I want to recover something, or I want to […]
I woke up with a start the other day and remembered those colored beads and tattered imitation leather rope stringing them all together. After summer camp, I wore that bracelet for months. That rainbow of beads to tell us the story of salvation—all about creation, sin, Jesus’ sacrifice, growth in faith, and going on to […]
For a three-month stretch when I was seven or eight, I tried to learn how to pray. When I couldn’t sleep, I’d pull a children’s prayer book down from the shelf and move it to the crack of light that shone in from the hallway. I opened it up to the Lord’s Prayer and read […]
For a long time the threat of a new year brought with it an onslaught of more darkness, more enervating melancholy, more long, gray days ahead to suffer through. It was nothing to celebrate. At the end of one of those especially difficult years I met Alece Ronzino online. She too had experienced a year (or more!) like […]