I have written a lot about birth on this blog. God has used it like nothing else in my life as a metaphor for wholehearted surrender. In today’s podcast, I share a bit about birth, about surrendering hopes, surrendering regrets, surrendering fears, and ultimately surrendering our whole hearts to God. I hope this is an…
Tag: fear
The Memory and Promise of Light
There are moments, in the middle of the night, when the electricity of current events sends a shockwave through my sleeping body and wakes me, wide-eyed and shaken. What is going to happen to this broken world? I see myself, gathering my children around me like the mother in a fairy tale, walking into a…
Helpless (When Faith Trembles)
Helpless. The word rose up out of my mind and offered itself to me in the middle of a dark night. I held a feverish child in my arms, watched his labored breathing, imagined the flickering candle of his precious little life before my eyes. My mind traveled farther than I meant it to go,…
It’s Going to Be Okay
Sometimes I travel through time. Usually in the middle of the night, when I am awake with babies on either side of me, not daring to move lest I wake them and lose the few precious moments I have in my life to let my thoughts flow without interruption. During the days, the needs take…
Hope for a Heavy Heart (Podcast #18)
I have had so much going on in my heart and mind. I find myself waking in the middle of the night feeling shaken by the state of the world in which we are living and raising our children. I have very little quiet in my life to process through this right now, so forgive…
Thoughts on the Pandemic
Hello, my name is Mackenzie Chester. I am the mother of eight young children, and I am humbly asking you to please stop the spread of this virus. For the ones who cannot fight it off on their own, I am asking you to please do whatever you can for the weak. We are in…
Hope on the Inhale
hope on the inhaleafter the gut-punchthe diagnosis, bleak prognosislook into the mirrorbut your eyes can’t focuson any beauty but what’s lost hopeon the inhalein the breaking of headlinesthat beat on the shoreline, the rising of feartidesthat pull you back into despair hopeon the inhaleafter the deep sighafter the long cryafter the fists-raised-why hopeon the inhaleafter…
I Stand in This Breath of My Life
I am alive. I’m trying to let that sink in. I inherited the unfinished sketchbook of a beloved art professor who passed away last spring. Flipping through the pages this morning, I see how alike we are in our interactions with the blank pages–line drawings, quotation marks surrounding deep theological ideas and questions, to-do lists,…
The Space Between Here and a Miracle (Podcast Episode #4)
You can also listen and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. For anyone who is waiting on God to answer prayers for a way forward… Anyone who is at the end of their own resources… Anyone who, like me, needs a boost of faith this morning… Today I am reminding myself of God’s…
Broken Open-Hearted Love
Yesterday I learned that a dear friend is dying. There is no time to visit. No time to wrap up loose ends. This news just rips it all back open–that wound that I thought was nearly healed. The blow from my fall where I realized that death is actually a part of the human story….
Embracing This Breath
The perfect beauty of this morning actually hurts me. As I steal a quiet hour in my little garden with a cup of coffee, the world saturated in green, trees in bloom, birdsong, the first signs of new life coming up in my raised beds… My heart aches. The unabashed brilliance of life. It stings….
Hope and Miracles
What in the world is even happening? I find myself sifting through the media, shaking my head in wonder at all the different perspectives that claim to be true. I read statistics from experts in every field, see photographs that prove the arguments without a doubt, absorb the shocking headlines. I hear yelling from every…