Every kind of professional told us we’d probably never have children of our own. After years of enduring painful tests that revealed nothing and taking pills that produced no results, we were willing to pay a well-known fertility specialist to help us. Our chances of conceiving were so slim, even he encouraged us to keep […]
A brave friend confided in me that she went to the ends of the earth on a mission trip, and hated it. Although she was surrounded by needs and gladly worked tirelessly using her much-needed medical skills, she was miserable—not because she was uncomfortable, not because she was homesick, but because she was off mission […]
It appears in light of the recent political and social climate, the Family of God in Christ Jesus, known as Christians, has called a truce among itself. Recently characterized by infighting, it seems The Church has turned in its boxing gloves to focus on worldwide injustice, poverty, and spreading the Good News the Bible claims […]
One spring I followed my husband Heath to a local slumtel where homeless and transient people live. Behind each door were hard stories. There were half-clad elderly women who went visiting at midnight, children’s toys scattered among the broken glass and cigarette butts. Heroin addicts breastfed newborns. Incense coiled from inside the manager’s two-story quarters […]
I don’t know how she got our number, but a young homeless mother messaged us asking for work to earn 4 days’ rent money for the motel room she and her son were sleeping in. She’d spent what she could of her fast-food paycheck buying supplies for the new school year; now her biggest concern […]
Just kidding. I don’t know how to Jesus, but my husband does. I’ve seen him Jesus many times. One time at a drive-thru, it took us longer to order our food than the lady behind us could tolerate. It was hot, and she had her car door open screaming and cussing at us creatively. I […]
One time Daddy stole his grandfather. Great-grandpa Clark was sitting in his wheelchair outside the nursing home watching the traffic below. Daddy found him there, wearing his usual boggin and gloves in the hot summer breath of Alabama. Daddy stood a moment watching his grandfather, remembering the once strong, cross-tie cutter now frail at the […]
Play my favorite song. She said it softly to her daughter, my First Friend, who was driving her to a treatment. She says everything softly these days, because she has something incurable. The GPS barked out cancer center, as her song began to play… Your love is like radiant diamonds… The disease released her […]
I thought panic attacks were a made-up thing until a few years ago in December when I nearly had one. I was standing in the doorway waving goodbye to my family when without warning, unexplained terror went off in me like an airstrike siren. All manner of imagined chaos and tragedy played out in my […]
I don’t know Him. That’s what Peter said when the servant girl accused him of being a friend of Jesus. Peter’s heart broke into a thousand weeping pieces… sorry…so bleeding sorry he had denied even knowing the Savior of the World, his best Friend. But that was before The Resurrection. 2,000 years later, the […]