In Spanish, “Thanksgiving” is literally Thanksaction: Acción de gracias. I like how spirited that sounds. And today, I’m asking you to truly celebrate una acción de gracias. Please, contact your local Congressional representative, and ask them to do what they can to bring immigration reform to the House floor. Please. I attended Spanish-language church …
Stay in the messy place
Picture this: my child finds a plastic, battery-powered pottery wheel at the thrift store. I express concern that this particular tool may not be worth the money, but she is excited and pulls out her cash. Later, she is ready to use it. I look at the instructions. They talk about “wedging” and “centering.” …
Welcome Is More than Words
From the archives. When it was time to end a phone call, I knew what was coming. “Un beso grande,” whoever I was talking to would say. “A big kiss.” It would roll off their tongue like See ya or bye. I would follow suit, a little more awkwardly. “Un beso. Nos vemos.” *** I …
Edging towards the margins one blog post at a time
I read Christena Cleveland’s call to read blogs by people of color with a surge of chutzpah. “Absolutely,” I said to myself. “I just didn’t know where the people of color were blogging. I will get right on this.” Later that day, I added the twenty-odd bloggers to my feed reader. I felt proud. I …
Don’t be a robot for Jesus
There’s a reason I don’t read that many Christian books. Too often, I feel like throwing them across the room. Like the one I opened up the other day, which had this Christian wisdom nugget: “Jesus is teaching me to live by faith, not by my feelings.” On one hand, I completely agree with the …
To Succeed, Change What’s Not Working
A friend of mine just made a schedule for her week to help her accomplish some goals. I was impressed by the calendar taped to her fridge. “Yeah, she said. “But now we’ll see if I’ll actually stick to it.” Have you ever thought this? Made a new list of goals, and thought, Now the …
You just do it
I was twenty when I got to see Anne Lamott speak. I wore a beanie, and clutched her new book, Travelling Mercies, hoping to get it signed. I had devoured several of her books at that point: Bird By Bird, which talks about basic writing tools, and her fiction, especially her earliest novel, drawn from …
What I learned from talking to activists…nervously
When I started asking social justice activists questions, I thought I’d feel awful when I compared myself to them. If I talked with people who were walking the walk of serving the poor, of crossing cultural boundaries, of standing in the face of exploitation, of preaching reconciliation, I would be reminded over, and over at how …
In the empty spaces
Before we left for a six-month sabbatical in Buenos Aires, everyone agreed on one thing. “Kids are resilient,” everyone said. “Throw them with Argentine kids for five minutes and they’ll playing together. Your kids will be fine.” And my kids were fine, and they are resilient. But did my kids dive into a new culture without any hesitation, …
Better Questions Than “Am I Good Enough?”
“I’m waiting for us to get there,” my four-year-old told me. We were on the way to her second gymnastics class, the cars on the freeway breezing by us, the sky blue and adorned with soft wisps of clouds. We’d been in the car about two minutes. “I hear you, honey,” I told her from …
One less thing
I have saved the world many times. Or—at least—I have tried. I switched to organic vegetables, I subscribed to a CSA. I tried being vegetarian for a week–and ate a double bacon cheeseburger on day seven. I made all my Christmas gifts one year. I have volunteered for hospice and signed up for high school …
Change Comes from Choosing
Originally over at Suzannah Paul’s site. When my kids are angry, I have a religious experience. Sometimes my children rage, wild-eyed. Or they are cold, whispering “Bad Mama, bad Mama,” their lips curling in a smile. Or they destroy something and drop it at my feet, in shards or shreds. Jesus says to bless those …
Are you having a hard time handling parenthood—or life?
I struggle to handle both too. And then I read a post that made me start to wonder about why, exactly, I need to “handle” these things at all. At first, I really wanted to hate the post. “F&^% Ina May,” the title said. As someone who had two home births, who thinks natural birth can be …
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Dealing with “Irrational” Panic
This post originally appeared at The Happiest Home. Not long after we moved into our house a few years ago, I panicked. Big time. What was making me hyperventilate? Cabinet shelves. (Yes. Super-important.) Bear with me here. We just bought a lovely house. Days before our move, I started cleaning out the kitchen. I knew …
White and clueless about race? Here’s the secret to changing that. Well, the clueless part.
Do you ever feel guilty about how homogenous your friends are? Do you avoid multicultural situations or conversations about race and ethnicity because you’re terrified of making a mistake? Do you wish you knew how to get over yourself and follow Christ’s lead as a reconciler? I’m learning a ton from Christena Cleveland’s wise posts on …
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Finding Creativity in Community
When I was a new mom, a friend said something I’ve been mulling over ever since. “People over projects,” she said. We are both writers; she was speaking about finding work/life balance in the midst of the parenting storm. Projects were important, sure. Projects were great. But people needed to come first. I nodded. There in …
Jesus in the Loveliness
(Originally published on (in)courage). I had about a half-hour to spend time with God. My two children, three and six, were happy in front of a video. For now. To be a mother is to hurry, but it was Sunday, and the sky was a swirl of white on blue. We’d recently moved back to …
You Shouldn’t Follow My Spiritual Practices
The only music I have on my iPhone is scripture set to music. I try to listen to songs at least once a week. I’m finding having the Bible verses running through my head all day really encouraging. It helps my anxiety; in moments where the ugly self-critic starts up, I have ready songs to …
What Will REALLY Solve Your Problems?
One of the first questions everyone asks me when they find out that we homeschool is some variation of what kind of curriculum do you use? But the answer is I try not to use curriculum. Here’s why: the more money I invest, the less it gets used. I would really like to blame this …
Shouldn’t I be doing more? and other impossible questions
A new friend of mine from church came over for dinner the other day. She was looking at the homespun art we pin up to the walls: swirls of watercolor, stick figures and drawings. “I see you teach them about God,” she said approvingly. I glanced at the wall, surprised, feeling like a fraud. Why …
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How To Deal with Resistance In Your Creative Life
(I wrote this post back in 2013, when we’d just gotten back from time abroad. I don’t even recognize the organizational system I’m describing here. But the way anxiety (or, what Steven Pressfield calls “Resistance”) sprouts in cracks in my mental sidewalk? Very familiar). The other day, I sat down to write down my list …
Define Your Life, Change Your Life
I’ve been practicing drawing, and I’ve noticed something. I’ll sketch a picture of a cat, and look at it and think, “Meh.” Then, I take a pencil and go over the contour line again with a bold stroke. Along the cat’s back say, over its ear, the paw curled into a J at the end …
The shocking secret of courageousness
Originally published at The Happiest Home. I used to define myself by what I wouldn’t do. Dive headfirst in a pool. Duck under an ocean wave. Watch scary movies, even “scary” movies meant for children. Rollercoasters. Heights. Anything starting with the word “extreme.” I hate calling to order takeout. I hesitate, really, to pick up …
We Are Promised Peace. Really.
Bedtime went awry for no very good reason. I was done after a long day. Or: I decided it was a long day, and absolved myself from using kind words and polite questions. As my kids pulled on pajamas and brush teeth, I found myself yelling at someone taking too long to brush their teeth. …