I was chatting on the phone with my oldest this week about purity culture–which deserves a post on its own. (I have feelings. Big feelings.)
I expressed to him how tough it is as parents, when some of the less-healthy methods of purity culture are subtracted from parenting –I’m looking at you, shame-parenting–to find something as powerful to direct our kids toward good and keep them from what’s truly bad.read more
My daughter was 14 months old when she got glasses and began to wear the felt purple eye patch I’d stitched for her. Coincidentally, it was the same month, she started walking at last and pushed through her first tooth. We’d noticed she frequently went cross-eyed.
It wasn’t until she could talk that the opthalmologist was able to understand she didn’t have a muscle problem. She had a genetic condition from my side called Dewayne’s Syndrome, from a missing cranial nerve.read more
My husband–I unearthed this a few years into our marriage, when we finally had the fortitude to be more vulnerable with each other–thought he’d marry someone more athletic. (I am laughing out loud as I type. Poor guy.) To his credit, when he met me, I was running every morning, performing pushups and situps at night. We played intermural sports and pickup games of soccer together. We hiked together. And to my own credit, I still live an active lifestyle. But none of these has approved the actual coordination factor.
(My parents laugh about me as a child falling repeatedly into the same hole in the yard on my way over to the bus each morning. I do not share these memories. And one has to ask, if it were true: Why did no one ever fill in said hole?)
So I have a teenager, and another just about. Most of me is tickled pink about all the real conversations we get to hold, all the fun we have as a maturing family, all the crazy jokes they tell me that leave all of us laughing.
And there’s this leeettle part of it that scares the bejeebies out of me.
Seemingly separate note: I have recently acquired an agent for a non-fiction book I’m writing, which makes my heart do little cartwheels of happiness. It was a moment I wasn’t sure would ever happen.read more
I was there just this past Saturday, too. Felt like it had been a year of keeping my head down, doing the right thing with a hopeful smile. Or maybe some tears. I’ve mentioned this last year my struggles with feeling powerless; with the tension of not living some dreams.
I may have even scrawled the phrase tired of a “Yes, sir” life in my journal this past weekend.
Let us hope that we are all preceded in this world by a love story.
–Sweet Land (PG, 2005)
I tease my husband (the poor introvert!). Because whenever I write about him—he, who washes his hands of anything to do with internet attention—readers eat. It. Up.read more
I was eighteen, it was February, and we were all headed on a road trip that weekend to a mutual friend’s house. I’ve wondered what God thought of that day, if perhaps He was rubbing His hands together with glee. The stage was set, everything immaculately timed.
In my memory, the young man was wearing a white T-shirt and khaki shorts. His hair was longer then, curly. Upon request, he prayed for our safe travel before we left. We all left for Oklahoma City and I climbed in behind the passenger’s seat of his car. I confess the thought may have flitted through my mind that his car was a little girly. That was before I knew he paid for it and maintained it himself, and before I’d ride around in it for the next five years, happy as a clam to be in his passenger’s seat.
That day, February 5, 1999, was the day I met the love of my life. If God would’ve tapped me on the shoulder—Hey, that guy over there? Yeah. That one. You two are going to have four kids, live in Africa. He’s the kind of best friend and man you couldn’t even imagine yourself having.read more
Read an interesting quote yesterday. So tell me: Do you agree or disagree?
The place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. (Frederick Buechner)
So at first glance, I’m like, Yes. Yes! Yes with a smiley-face-with-heart-eyes emoji! Especially when it comes to my kids (which you saw in Tuesday’s post on ideas for teaching kids the spiritual discipline of service). I want them to not just drag themselves through service, like our stick-shift doing 45 MPH in second gear. I long for them to find that burbling well inside of them: their part of the Body of Christ.read more