-
Relationships with Words
This post feels a bit heavy-handed on “words” — but given that the physical tethers have been stretched thin during COVID, words are often all we have to go on in our relationships. I can be a vulnerable person, or at least come off as such, in the way I use written word to process feelings. When I feel prolonged dissatisfaction, shame or sadness, I often work my way through and rise above them by wrestling with words. It’s like being a broody hen, who feels all sorts of ways and sits on her eggs until they have hatched. My words are my eggs, an expression of myself. I share…
-
When God Doesn’t Burn it All Down
Remember how God sent Jonah to call the people of Nineveh out of their evil ways and back to Him? Jonah was so offended by the people of Nineveh that he didn’t want to offer them God’s message of reconciliation, and he actually first ran the opposite direction. He ran so hard that he endangered the lives of sailors and ended up as fish bait before he relented to God’s big ask. When the people of Nineveh did listen and repent, Jonah was livid that God forgave them. He was so ready for God to burn it all down, that he missed that God’s heart was to be reconciled to…
-
Processing 2020
Of all the years, 2020 has been one for the books. Years from now we will look back at the headlines of this year's headlines with hearts and mouths still agape. Personally, I've never spent as much time as I have this year reflecting on deep and hard topics.
-
Whitetop Weekend
My dad’s mom suffered Alzheimer’s and dementia at the end of her life, and it seemed she remembered childhood bits, but then there were huge chunks of time missing. I’m not a rock climber, but I believe documenting memories and thoughts is a little like when a climber clips in to a new anchor once they’ve finished a pitch. Not all is lost if they slip up. So here I am, clipping in a minor memory because it all matters. There is glory in climbing to new heights just as there is glory in watching the flowers sway in the wind. Having a child start middle school has really taken…
-
The Giving Tree
As I pondered which book has been the most influential in my life, I browsed the shelves in my home and thought back to the classics I read in highschool and college. There are many authors that have challenged and shaped me such as Katherine Patterson, Annie Dillard, Ernest Hemingway, Milan Kundera, Anne Lamott, and Thornton Wilder, but as I reached back further into childhood, one book that stands out and I’ve always considered as my favorite is Shel Silverstien’s The Giving Tree. Let me say upfront, it’s not a warm, inspiring book. I know it is read as a love story, but it’s more of a tragic romance. A quick…
-
The Gas Station Jerk
This morning I’d like to explore getting my feelings hurt over silly things. The first little story is about my cat, and it may seem unrelated to the story of the gas-station-jerk, but my emotional fall out from each is tethered to the same starting point. Nala is our fifteen year old cat that we adopted from the SPCA about a week or two after we returned from our honeymoon. After doing a few puzzles in our tiny one bedroom apartment in the evenings, we were both a little bored. As I was in graduate school and tended to work in the field and out of home rather than in…
