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 become new versions of ourselves. We hope to change! Really! We do. But, then a few weeks in, we’re back. In the same routines. Same […]
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 to cover that particular medicine you really need or you’re stuck between the impossible decision about whether or not to send your kid […]
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 and a skink in it. Who he claims “are friends and knew each other already.” Great, great. Not entirely clear what garden snakes […]
I see you there, suffering alone,with the illness or pain that lingersthough friends do not,—or cannot. You, in isolation,locked in, or locked out. You, the caregiversstruggling in the certaintythat there is not enoughstrength, time or resources. You who counsel others in their trauma,but suffer deeply from your own. You who are grieving losses, too many […]
God, our bodies remember the sleepless nights and cold sweats and unrelenting stress.Show us how to process all that we suffer. “How frail is humanity!How short is life, How full of trouble!”—Job 14:1, NLT Blessed are we, when we decide to make room for all of it,the fear and the gratitude, the complexity and the […]
Blessed are we in the tender place between curiosity and dread,We who wonder how to be whole,when dreams have disappeared and part of us with them,where mastery, control, determination, bootstrapping, and grit,are consigned to the realm of before (where most of the world lives),in the fever dream that promises infinite choices, unlimited progress, best life […]