I was afraid to become a parent. I was afraid I’d be a lousy mom, that my type-A personality would make me controlling and exacting. Likewise, I loved the idea of homeschooling, but knew I would drive everyone around me crazy if I tried to be super-structured. Like Bert sings in Mary Poppins, my …
Small Groups: FAQ for Slight Misanthropes
Welcome to small group! You might think being social shouldn’t need its own set of FAQs, but Christian community is a little fraught. For some of us, it’s the closest we ever get to heaven on earth. For the rest of us, it’s the biggest disappointment since The Phantom Menace. I hate bracing myself for …
I See You, Bully: For SheLoves Magazine
I see you bullying a friend of yours in fourth grade. Your target is wearing white sneakers, and she doesn’t want to get them dirty in the mud. You laugh at her because they’re so glowing white they’re ridiculous against the cut of her not-cool jeans and her squared-off K-Mart t-shirt. This girl you’re trying to …
Revelation Is Not A Guarantee–for The Mudroom
For a three-month stretch when I was seven or eight, I tried to learn how to pray. When I couldn’t sleep, I’d pull a children’s prayer book down from the shelf and move it to the crack of light that shone in from the hallway. I opened it up to the Lord’s Prayer and read …
Endurance Is Not Cold Tolerance: for The Mudroom
When I was a new mom, I read that children go through periods of equilibrium and disequilibrium that last about six months each. I kept hoping my daughter was nearing the end of a period of disequilibrium. After all, my sweet girl had been pushing all my buttons for months with expert grace, and she was about to have her …
College Can Kill Our Colorblindness (If We Let It): For Her.meneutics
Earlier this month, protests about race erupted at several American colleges. The uproar began at the University of Missouri, where the chancellor and president resigned over their responses to racially charged harassment. Meanwhile at Yale, an official email about avoiding racist Halloween costumes, such as blackface, inspired one faculty member’s response asking for “free speech and the …
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Surrendering to Communion for The Mudroom
“Asking is, at its core, a collaboration.” Amanda Palmer, The Art of Asking It only took nine unsubscribes to undo me. I use some software to manage the subscribers to my blog, and if there’s activity—people signing up (yay!) people un-signing up (sigh!), I get an email. Lately, I have been sighing more than normal. …
It is a gift to know a suffering God: One Woman’s Yes with Tanya Marlow
Tanya Marlow is another Mudroom and SheLoves contributor, and she writes bracingly about suffering, theology, and faith. She’s also bedridden most of the time. I’m grateful for her voice, and her experience, because she’s both honest about how sucky her disease is, and also fiercely wise about what God teaches her through it. She makes me …
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The Day I Regretted Writing for SheLoves—at SheLoves Magazine
The first time SheLoves Magazine accepted a post I’d written, I wondered if I’d made a mistake submitting it at all. Don’t get me wrong; I was proud of the essay. I’d also been reading SheLoves for a few months by then, impressed with their writers and their global outlook. SheLoves seemed like a good fit for my writing—if they’d take …
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What I Wish I’d Known About Friendship After College
The night before I left college, I got home late. There, at my door, I found a wrapped package: a graduation gift from Stacy, one of my closest friends from church. She’d finished and framed an exquisite cross-stitch of one of my favorite verses. The sight made my heart sink. I’d missed saying goodbye. The …
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The Night I Almost Stopped Being a Christian: for The Mudroom
The night I almost stopped being a Christian anymore, I sat alone, at midnight, in the living room of the house I shared with three other women. I was twenty-two, almost six months out of college, depressed, and despairing. I’d discovered I was depressed in my therapist’s office the summer before. The revelation was like a pin …
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Please Do Not Touch Me–for SheLoves Magazine
“Rub the Buddha belly, Rylee,” my older sister, Katie, said to her daughter. Rylee smiled up at me and gingerly put her hand on the crest of my pregnant abdomen. She moved it back and forth, with a hesitant, irritating judder. I smiled, but had to grit my teeth to not swat her hand away. …
My child, my backpack, and the long days of motherhood
When my daughter Lucy was three, I decided to get intentional about her education. I wanted to homeschool long-term, but knew I was not an ideal candidate: I like quiet, order, and long-range projects. I also felt a little cuckoo stuck at home. With 18 hours a day to kill, I counted the days until fifth …
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Why Does Twitter Terrify Me? for The Mudroom
Let’s start out with a confession: Twitter terrifies me. I got my handle a few years ago. The day my friend Melissa explained to me how she manages her twitter account, makes lists, what she posts, and what a hashtag is, my heart thudded in my chest, dully as I listened. It’ll get easier, I …
Deciding you’re an outsider—and deciding you’re not
My sister Katie, and I were talking about social anxiety recently—something we both struggle with a lot. “My therapist said I always automatically assume I’m an outsider,” she said. “I hold myself away from people and assume I’m on the outside of what they’re doing. And she said that attitude is a choice, and I can …
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I thought I’d do a new friend a favor and not make friends at all
I realized Joy went to church with me on Pentecost Sunday. I sat with my parents at the special outdoor service, held in the local high school stadium. In the bleachers before it began, I shaded my eyes with my hand to see the stage. There was a girl up there. A girl my age. Joy. …
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Yoga, Cultural Appropriation, and Hospitality: For Christ and Pop Culture
My first prenatal yoga class, I tried to pretend the picture didn’t bother me. It was huge—at least five feet tall, framed imposingly, colored in bright pinks and blues as if the figure had posed on the beach at sunset. She was a Hindu goddess, I thought. I didn’t know which, or have any idea …
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The land of the once-Christians
This is the third in a series of three posts about boundary-keeping in the church. Namely, how do we decide who is really “Christian”, and how do those dividing lines make people feel? I recognize that boundaries, theology, and creeds are essential for deciding what we believe, and who we are. But the practice of drawing lines is fraught. I’ve …
Better faith information will not save our lives
This is the second in a series of three posts about boundary-keeping in the church. Namely, how do we decide who is really “Christian”, and how do those dividing lines make people feel? I recognize that boundaries, theology, and creeds are essential for deciding what we believe, and who we are. But the practice of drawing lines is …
When Asking a Simple Question Tears Open Your Heart
“Wait, I didn’t know you had a brother and sister,” Renee said. We were in my pool. The aqua color reflected the sky canopy overhead. It was Tucson hot, not as hot as Phoenix hot, but hot enough. On the radio in summer, they counted the number of days over one hundred degrees, and it …
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Caregiving Expands Your Heart
What do I dislike most about homeschooling? I am around my kids almost all the time. What do I like best about it? I am around my kids almost all the time. My kids are asking questions at 10 am, all in my business at noon, and just starting their second wind at 3:30. They expect my attention …
When It’s Easier to Be Alone
Allrighty-then. Here’s my contribution. “So in this new year, how are you going to take care of yourself?” my therapist, Lola, asked me the other day. I stared at her, blinking. A normal person would know what to say to a question like this. Self-care. Self-care. The fact that I couldn’t answer her quickly did not bode well …
Gathering is a pain in the ass
After my mother-in-law Donna, died, we sorted her things. She sewed, the kind of seamstress that will deconstruct her favorite , figure out how to improve it, and make herself three more. My mother-in-law was always on the looking for odds and ends at the thrift store where she worked, especially anything mechanical or vintage. …
When listening breaks our white hearts: for SheLoves Magazine
A few weeks ago, a young man approached me in church to pass the peace. In the Spanish-language church I attend, this means moving around the room, trying to wish others the peace of Christ and shake hands with as many people as possible. This brother in Christ was ed in a baggy t-shirt, long …
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