Dear Maggie, Thank you for your last letter. I read it on my walk back from the mailbox and my heart broke with yours. I am so sorry to hear about your friend, Lydia. It’s a sad, strange thing when an individual who made the good confession of faith and walked with other believers in … Continue reading When a Friend Walks Away
This article was written for the August issue of the Lee Creek Baptist Church newsletter, Grace & Peace. Since my miscarriage last summer, I’ve found myself having conversations of a similar shape with fellow sisters in Christ who are grieving or suffering a bitter loss. There are plenty of difficult things in the days following, … Continue reading A Song of Praise to Our God
This piece was written for the May issue of the Lee Creek Baptist Church newsletter, Grace & Peace. A few years ago, I heard the story of a woman who went into the hospital, only for no one from her church to come visit her. No one checked in. No one sent a card. Instead … Continue reading The Card Lady
This piece was written for the Lee Creek Baptist Church newsletter, Grace & Peace. On the week that my grandma was passing away last summer, there were members from my family’s church who stocked their fridge with meals---crockpot soups and breakfast casseroles. My sweet grandma had come home on hospice, and we knew it would … Continue reading Hands & Feet Hospitality
This piece was written for the February issue of our church newsletter, Grace & Peace. Each year, I get a little better at remembering to plant bulbs. I wait until the garden has fallen asleep and the late chrysanthemums have stopped blooming, those first few frosts biting at their heads and turning them gray. One … Continue reading Bear Fruit With Patience
It was my parents’ idea to drop me off for the day at Mrs. Rosalie’s duplex in town. I wanted to learn how to sew a pair of palazzo pants, and Mrs. Rosalie had worked as a seamstress most of her life. Instead of plopping me in front of a YouTube video, my dad dropped … Continue reading Mrs. Rosalie
This piece was written for our church's November newsletter, Grace & Peace. When I was a little girl, I remember something Corrie ten Boom said that stayed with me: "When people come up and give me a compliment... I take each remark as if it were a flower. At the end of the day I … Continue reading A Bouquet of Thanks
Dear Maggie,* Once when I was a teenager, I went to a big concert by a Christian band-–the kind of concert where you feel the drums beat under your ribcage. The event was themed around one of the band’s new songs, which dealt with the worth of a young woman who doesn’t see herself as … Continue reading On Goldenrod & Body Image
One day a few years ago, I stood on the porch of a lady who'd just had surgery. I had both arms wrapped under a brown Aldi bag with jars of soup and a loaf of bread inside, and I was feeling rather small. As the lady's son took the paper bag and I warned … Continue reading Store Bought Hospitality
Books are a love language, and one of the ways Jared demonstrated his love for me early on was by lending me his pastoral library. I love books, Jared loves books (he has more than I do), and he’s always been generous with them. I’d come home from my visits to Arkansas with commentaries and … Continue reading Two Little Tributes
