Have you ever had an experience that startled you into a fresh awareness of the fragility of human life? This podcast is a putting-to-words of just such an experience. Last week my baby boy and I were helicoptered into the Children’s Hospital of Atlanta with a medical emergency which is thankfully resolved now but has…
Tag: suffering
Looking for God in Everything (Podcast #19)
Halfway through recording, the baby woke to join me. Have a seat with us on our front porch, grab a cup of tea, and let me tell you some stories about how I see God working in our lives. We will also talk about looking for God in the way we perceive the future, in…
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…
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,…
Beauty in the Midst of Darkness
There is so much darkness in this world. It presses in against us. In the middle of the night, it enters into our minds in the quiet spaces and works to leave a shadow that lingers even when the morning comes. We wake to light, but its brilliance is dimmed by the memory of those…
My Beautiful Dying Mother, A Birth Story
Mama had nine children. I am the youngest, and I have often felt a deep sense of gratitude that she surrendered her life to this process so many times. I see it as no small miracle that I even exist in the world. And that my seven children exist. Mama was always the first person…
Standing in the Hallway of Sorrow, thoughts on losing my Mother
(In honor of my beautiful, selfless Mother who went home to be with Jesus yesterday afternoon, hours after I wrote this post.) I am going to write something that is braver and stronger than I now feel, but I believe it with all my heart. Daddy met Mama on a Sunday morning at a little…
Longing
Longing. This word won’t leave me alone. It first jumped out of the pages of Mere Christianity (by C.S. Lewis) a few weeks ago, and since then, it has worked itself into every book, every movie, and every mini-drama of my life. The word itself can give me the feeling. (((Do you know what I mean?)))…
Waking up to the Miracle
I had an amazing experience this week. It is hard for me to tell about it, because I had to look into the face of suffering to see it. But I want to tell it. I have to tell it. I am bursting to tell it. On Monday, I went to visit my niece, Marti…
The Daily Turn #18: {The Song of My Daughter}
The woman who scanned my groceries in the checkout line felt compelled to tell me (in the two minutes that she held my undivided attention) that she would never bring children into this world. She had watched the news too much, and it was only going to get worse. I wouldn’t want my kids to…