New Years is wrought with great plans. Plans to eat different. Act different. Save different. Be different. We want to believe that at the precipice of a new year we can becom...
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The Power of Unconditional Love
Sometimes what happens to you is not fair. It’s not fair that you got that diagnosis or that your mom isn’t here to show you the ropes or the insurance company refuses ...
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A Rhythm for an Uncertain Week
So it’s Saturday. WHO KNEW?! And Toban is using the power washer (classic mennonite stress-cleaning) and Zach is in a tree holding a bucket that, when last I checked, had a snake...
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No Reason Whatsoever
Fear is a terrible friend. Keeps us up at night. Seems to call at weird times. Doesn’t care if we are too busy or too sad. Prevents us from making any good decisions during the d...
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Gondola Prayers
When I was 5-years-old our family went on one of those gondolas up a mountain in British Columbia, Canada, and just as our cable car suspended over the deepest part of the valley b...
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God is on the Losing Team
When I was five, I played the cello for the first time in a music festival. Music festival is a strong word for the experience I had. Yes, there were lots of players and pieces and...
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When You’re Not Feeling Very #Blessed
We don’t live in a culture of blessing. We live in a culture of #blessed. #Blessed is attached to anything from a birth announcement to a new boyfriend, a rental car upgrade ...
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The Burden of Love
Do you sometimes find yourself looking at something made of letters and thinking, Hey! I’m not illiterate. I love using my eyes! Well do I have a treat for you. Every month we re...
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Falling Far From The Tree
“The apple never falls far from the tree.” So the saying goes as a way of explaining why children most often resemble their parents. It is usually people’s response when they...
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When Self-Help Hurts
Most self-help books are quite confident about offering us advice on how to live our best life now by losing weight, gaining confidence, dealing with family issues, or hustling our...
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Chronic Not Curable
Of all my favorite heresies, mental self-determination probably tops the list. I am what I choose to be. Most of the primary spiritual experiences of my life had been framed in tha...
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June Book Club: Turtles All The Way Down
Well hello my dears, As you may have heard, I’M LAUNCHING A BOOK CLUB (you can read more about that here) where I will feature a mix of fiction, non-fiction, and spiritual ti...
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The Things We Tell Ourselves
When I was suddenly diagnosed with cancer, words to describe my situation came easily. I was “sick,” or “desperately ill,” or, let’s face it, “dying.” Now that modern...
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When Your Child is Diagnosed
Hello my dears, Today, I want to introduce you to someone very special to me—my mom! Since we’re in the Mother’s Day spirit around here, I thought it would only be right to i...
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How to Grieve Well: A Special Conversation
In the wake of Rachel Held Evan’s death, so many of you have asked questions like: What do I do with these awful feelings? When will they stop? Can I feel sad even if...
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The Language of Grief: New Podcast Episode
Hello dear friends, We are launching the new season of Everything Happens with heavy hearts today. We join those grieving our teacher and author and pastor and friend, Rachel Held ...
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New Podcast Season Coming Soon
Hello My Dears, Well, it’s been a minute. But I am thrilled to announce that we’re back! (And also deeply apologetic it took this long. So long. I am really sorry about that.) ...
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Living Into Easter Joy
Easter isn’t just one day—it is an entire season. The next fifty days celebrate Jesus’ victory over Sin and Death—which is even longer than Lent. It’s a reversal that res...
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The Harrowing of Hell
And so here we are: this is Holy Week, the final days of Lent. It is a time jam-packed with emotional lows and highs, powerful theology and moving services such as the foot washing...
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A World Turned Upside Down
Next Sunday is Palm Sunday, the day that marks the joyous entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. As in every other occasion of his earthly time among us, our expectations are reversed, and...
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Rejoicing in the Midst of Sorrow
If you attend a church that observes the liturgical calendar, this weekend you may have noticed the sanctuary decorated with flowers, clergy clad in pink vestments, and the organis...
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Is Asking the Antidote We Need?
As children most of us wrote to Santa Claus to ask for particular Christmas gifts. I’m not sure all of us asked our parents for the Jem doll, a 1980s version of Barbie except tha...
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A Season of Stubborn Hope
We feel our smallness when we consider the universe, unutterably vast, dark, and scattered. Whole swaths of space are empty while elsewhere galaxies drift through the void for eons...
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How Lent Prepares Us for What is Lost
When I was a little girl, my parents would bribe me with a dollar for every poem I memorized. It is disconcerting to see a child recite some of the sexier parts of Romeo and Juliet...
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Pancakes, Fat Tuesday, and Cheering for the Losing Team
[Listen to a recording of today’s article by clicking play below.] It’s a day with a lot of names—Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, Fastnacht—but around our hous...
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Why Christmas is Not Lent
My upbringing wasn’t exactly traditional, especially come December. My Dad is (if I may say so) the expert on Christmas. He received his Ph.D. in History from King’s Colle...
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The Superheroes of Love
Christmas is all about togetherness and no one understands that more than the Hallmark Channel. As everyone who is also tracking the Countdown to Christmas with the Hallmark Christ...
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Goodbye Light. Hello Darkness.
Zach helped me light the first candle of Advent on Sunday. The Advent Wreath is a tradition created by a German pastor in the 19th century as a way to teach kids about the com...
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When There's No Good Card for That
Hello my dears, As it turns out, sharing your innermost feelings with millions of strangers in the form of a fancy book was an even more inside-out-feeling than I imagined. Who kne...
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What to Read When You Can’t Talk About God
It’s happened a million and one times. I’m getting my nails done, picking up take-out, or making small talk in the line at the post office. Someone will ask where I work, and I...
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Saying Things Worth Keeping
I cleaned out my work office yesterday. I rearranged the futon, moved my desk to face the window, hung new artwork, and covered the ugliest cabinets with stick-on wallpaper. I’m ...
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On Easter and Suffering
A poor carpenter from Nazareth was put to death this week, died, was buried, and rose from the dead. Even though Christians do a lot of thinking and talking about tombs on Easter w...
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Patients Don't Bite
Imagine this: you’re lying back in a dentist chair. Your dentist is descending on you with a flashy steel scalpel, about to cut out one of your front teeth. As the morphin...
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Your Pain is Also Mine
I recently had a dream that I almost drowned in the ocean shallows. I was floating when a massive whirlpool formed beneath me. I tried to get my bearings but I couldn’t swim agai...
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There’s No Dictionary for This
What’s the first thing to come to mind when you hear the words, “Kiss me”? Or how about, “popcorn”? Or what about “colorectal”? EXACTLY. Words have weight. Words are ...
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