Daddy and I used to play a game where we’d ride all over Winston County in his Jeep, and I’d guess which concrete jobs he had done. I was good at spotting his work because he’s the best, but even easier than finding pours that were his, was finding pours that were not his. Uneven […]

Several years ago, I asked God to send someone to teach me about Him, like a mentor. He answered my prayer by relocating a young woman all the way from Dubai, UAE to my town, and because God is the Inventor of funny, her husband happened to be born in Bethlehem. But while God was […]

The American classroom is a microcosm of our nation, and what every teacher knows is, the problem with our world is not racism. It’s not guns. Or violence. Or corruption. Those are symptoms. If we’re going to have a serious conversation about how to heal our nation, we have to identify the inconvenient truth about […]

I am not okay. Those words are nearly taboo in the South, because ours is an inheritance of stubborn resolve. The generations before us pushed through without complaining, because almost everyone was suffering and no one was special in the sense that their difficulty outweighed their neighbor’s. The standard reply to every concern was, We’re fine, […]

Several years ago, I told a dear friend of mine that I was praying God would pour down rain on her Gay Pride parade. I’m not kidding. But let me back up a little bit… When I was in middle school, we moved to Ohio for 4 months and 23 days. I was the new […]

I needed to go away, to walk with Immanuel. God with us. To remember who He is, To hear the Gospel again, for the first time, and remember… Abba. That’s the name His children call Him, the Aramaic name that means Daddy. The Father full of love, mercy, grace, and hope. I really just wanted […]

After tucking our girls in bed, I got right down on my knees in front of their dollhouse to see the world through their eyes, searching for that child-like faith Jesus loves. Searching for perspective from the little ones to whom The Kingdom belongs.   The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these. ~ […]

A 4-foot chicken snake was curled up in the hen’s nest when Daddy reached for the eggs. A few days later, he was out of town and needed a favor of me: feed his chickens and collect the eggs… Inside the dark barn, everything looked like a snake to me. His barn is darkest at […]

Last weekend I witnessed a group of mostly soldiers walk 35 miles in honor of a friend and brother who gave his life for them and me in this ongoing war. It’s a very big deal, and they do it every year. I watched them closely as they marched through humid morning fog, into heat […]

The school where I used to teach had a rule: No gum. Students caught chewing gum were ticketed, and the tickets accumulated into consequences. As a new teacher, this was a rule I felt was worth enforcing like Law because gum made a terrible mess. It was hard work writing all those gum tickets, but […]