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Thoughts on Friendship
Yesterday morning, my friend Claire and her son Tav came by for a visit. While Claire and I were enjoying good conversation, Scooby and Tav were a little ornery and unsure what to do with themselves, so they alternated between snacks, trucks, fridge magnets and mama begging. About 45 minutes into their visit, Scooby takes Claire by the hand, and leads her through the kitchen and dining room and then stops with her at the front door and looks up…
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Lies About Longing and Wholeness
It terrifies me that as Christian women we often propagate the idea that we are not whole until we are both married and have children. We train single women’s hearts and minds in preparation to some day be good wives and mothers, and we teach mothers how to be better mothers. Often, all other classifications of women (married no kids, widowed, divorced, abandoned, once had children and have suffered their loss, celibate anyone?) slip through the cracks. While I believe…
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A Tiny Thing To Be Thankful For
I am very thankful for the first day of the second trimester! – so technically this might be the first day of the last week of the first trimester, but whatever. It’s still exciting and I’m calling it second trimester. Today, I am 12 weeks pregnant! For those who are dumbfounded that I was able to keep the secret from you, know that my own mother didn’t even know until Wednesday. After two losses in a span of four months,…
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It's A Due Date
Today marks the approximate due date of the pregnancy I lost back in March. I don’t think these things ought to be forgotten. I am thankful for healing, family, friends, and the upcoming holiday season. I was listening to some Christmas tunes on the radio this morning when Faith Hill’s song “A Baby Changes Everything” came on, and I was brought back to two Christmases ago when I was in my third trimester with Scooby, absolutely huge and so ready…
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The Church Doesn't Need Me Anymore
As Vintage21 Church has grown, one aspect I have struggled with is that the church no longer needs me. When there were only a hundred or so of us, we could see our handiwork in the physical space. We looked at a wall and knew that Scooby spent countless hours on the carpentry. We looked up at the massive burlap tree in the rafters and saw the scratches on our knuckles from stuffing the burlap sacks the day before. We…
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Church Cynicism
When Vintage21 opened the doors to a “what do you look for in a church?” group discussion in 2002, I was there. I moved with the church from a theater in Cary, to a school in Cary, to Harget Street, to Oberlin Street and then back to Harget Street. I’ve been with it as it grew from 40 to 1400 people and now is even larger. Early on, I viewed it as my church, the place for me to settle.…
