Inevitably, life gets unstable at times. We can be going along just fine, and then out of the blue, we’re thrown off kilter. Suddenly, everything we thought we knew feels shaky and uncertain. In my family’s life, instability was …
A Messy Invitation
We were halfway through winter when the walls started closing in like we were stuck in a bad dream. After months of temperatures so cold we couldn’t endure more than five minutes outside, and even more months of colds and …
On Telling the Stories We’re Too Afraid to Share (And How It Can Deepen Friendships- and Hope)
We met in church nursery – or at least that’s where we reconnected after a nearly two-decade hiatus. Eliza* and I had known each other as acquaintances in childhood, but when our family moved back to my hometown when I …
Medicine For a Mom’s Soul
There is a voice that inhabits every mother’s head. It is a voice of shame and doubt, and it points a finger inward, berating us for all our shortcomings. Today you slacked off, it whispers. Today you made mistakes. Today you were …
When Talking About Porn Might Cost You Everything
This is the second in a series of posts about journeying through a husband’s addiction to porn. “I think my husband is watching porn and I’m scared to bring it up because I might lose it all.” I never …
That Darn Play-Doh
At some point when I wasn’t paying attention, Play-Doh enlisted The Joker and James Bond to train my children how to play with it. They all worked together, compiling their maniacal-evil-genius and their handsome-devil-spy-intelligence, along with my household schematics, and …
Embracing Rest in the Everyday
I am a body in motion. Tonight, while cleaning up after dinner, I scolded my 2-year-old for pushing the kitchen chairs around. She lined them all up and said, “I’m taking away all the chairs. You can’t have any chairs, …
How to Be Vulnerable
“Can I cry?” The deluge of tears and snot began, of course, before this terse sentence had even left my lips. I was mired in a season of life where I felt like nothing but one huge, raw, exposed nerve, …