Of Thorns and Skin

Listen to the audio recording of Prasanta’s words here, or read her piece below: Of Thorns and Skin Your Task Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.*   A long wind brushes its fingers through the trees […]

Seasons of Community

The summer sun is high, although the afternoon clock inches toward six. The sprinkler water play in my front yard has turned into mud soup creations. I watch my children as they gather ingredients with the neighbor kids. Buckets hold their pulled-up weeds and mud. Garden tools turn into mixing spoons.  I yell towards the […]

The Time Has Come to Cross

You know it well, don’t you? That feeling of inhabiting two worlds, not fully in either. One foot is still firmly planted in the place you are leaving, while another is itching to propel you forward. You are at the threshold and somehow you are stuck. These days I feel it in a lot of […]

The Space Between Darkness and Dawn

The space in between darkness and dawn….. the space where the morning star hovers and the sun’s rays have not yet touched the sky where the wash of a rising canopy warms the earth   this space is where God restores our stories.   Yes, there was pain in the darkness in places concealed: the […]

Finding Peace in Transition

There was a time in my life when I was more comfortable in the midst of transition. I remember once in my twenties sitting on my suitcases in the airport in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. I was wearing a long, billowy skirt, a t-shirt, and my favorite Jesus sandals looking like the quintessential Christian […]

Under this Same Sun

It wasn’t cued to play today. It’s been years. But somehow between My Chemical Romance, Green Day, Imogen Heap, and all the other music encroaching the playlists of parents with teens, it surfaced: This fragment of life Lora gave me a lifetime ago. I listen to The Weepies, as the Steve Tannen from 16 years […]

Podcast: Finding Grace in the Middle

Season 1 Episode 5 This podcast is a companion piece that goes along with the previous post of the same name. In this episode, writer Nicole Walters narrates her latest Mudroom piece, “Grace in the Middle,” with pauses throughout where she speaks deeper into the meaning of her text. If you find yourself in the […]

Grace in the Middle

Editor’s Note: Don’t miss the audio addition of Nicole’s piece below – where she narrates her  journey into liminal spaces and delves deeper into finding grace there . . . in the middle. (The Mudroom Podcast, Episode 5) I was falling behind, dragging them down. I glimpsed it on their little faces—the fear gathering in […]

This Open Table

Not long after my husband and I were married over 15 years ago, one of our first “grown-up” purchases was an antique, oak kitchen table. It can expand to make room for more guests. Through the years, many guests have indeed dined there, resulting in several scratches and knicks that add to its charm. The […]

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 […]

Life Lived From the Middle

I bristled when I received a message from an editor at a publishing house asking if I was working on any projects. “I can’t write a book now,” I thought. “I’m still living in this messy space of transition between Asia and America, between old dreams dying and not yet discovering the new. Standing on […]

Our Hope Rises Higher

Surveying the damage, they can’t imagine life again after the storm. They can’t yet see the trees that will grow to replace those pulled up by their roots. They can’t picture anything flourishing again in this place of devastation. *** Looking out at the endless sea of cars sitting on the interstate, I felt restless […]

To Dwell in the In Between

The sounds of bicycle bells, car horns, and rickshaw motors are my constant companion. They intermingle with the clanging of construction in a city that always seems to be expanding and the Call to Prayer five times a day reminds us that we are in an unfamiliar place. As foreign as these things feel, these […]

Selling Out by Settling Down?

Like Belle, I never planned to live a provincial life. I, too, wanted “adventure in the great, wide somewhere.” I wanted it more than I could tell. But today we bought a house. An ordinary, provincial house with a two-car garage and a Whirlpool dishwasher. As we walked out of the title office, giant trees […]

Suffering as a Spiritual Discipline

When we talk about Spiritual Disciplines, we like to think of things we are adding into our lives. Rhythms, practices, prayers. Maybe it’s painting or journaling, perhaps it’s times spent wandering a trail in nature or a different way of allocating our time. Regardless of the method, the goal is the same: to connect with […]