When Mother’s Day is Hard
I never used to think about how Mother’s Day affected some women, that it could be the hardest day of the year for them. It never occurred to me that on that special Sunday in church, the red roses...
View ArticleHow to Not Let the World Break You
I want to stay in bed in the Bible black pre dawn. I want to slip under the grey sheets in waves of dreams and forget that I know the news. Even before I wake, I know the sadness is coming, chasing me...
View ArticleOde to My Uterus
Ode to My Uterus Hey old girl, I don’t know why I feel like calling you that. Maybe because in my mind you’re older, a more mature Whoopi Goldberg version of me that somehow holds the world’s wisdom....
View Article6 Ways to Heal from Cumulative Grief & Trauma
Trauma and loss happen to us all. Suffering is a part of life. But sometimes things occur and we don’t know or recognize it as trauma, or as something to be grieved. So we go on living, and...
View ArticleThe Broken Way: What I Learned from an African Mental Hospital-I
“Why are we afraid of broken things? What if the abundance of communion is only found there in the brokenness of suffering–because suffering is where God lives? Suffering is where God gives the most...
View ArticleOption B: How to Rise Above Disappointment
This year is six years, six years since we lost our first baby, six years since the toilet clotted blood. Last week was National Infertility Awareness Week and it pulls me back to the memories like my...
View ArticleUnexpected: How to Hold On When God Shuts a Door
We stumbled upon the circled labyrinth in the dark. We were in nowhere Gardnerville, Nevada on a road trip hoping to soothe the sting out of disappointing news. It sparked joy inside me. Remembrance of...
View ArticleSuffering, The Uninvited Companion: A Scott Shaum Interview
When you’re in the middle of deep suffering sometimes all you can do is exhale anguished prayers between sobs. Those prayers sound more like “Help” and “Please” than they do anything intelligible. All...
View ArticleWhy Being Perfect Cannot Save Us
I want so badly to do this perfectly. It’s like somewhere inside I believe if I do all the “right things” I can keep the bad things at bay. I hold tightly to this belief like a child gripping a...
View ArticleWhen Grieving is the Only Way Through Infertility
When I hold the baby and realize that it isn’t mine and I am not sure I will ever clasp feet that tiny in my hands, there is a small part of me that wants to walk to a building’s edge and simply step...
View ArticleMissionary Self-Care Guide to Coronavirus Re-entry
A life interrupted. That’s what this feels like. Re-entry is close to my heart because mine was so unsettling. When I left Uganda in 2013, I’d followed a plan. I had the goodbye celebration, like so...
View ArticleSurviving Infertility: The Other Side of Grief
Sometimes I can forget. How long I fought for him. How much grief I endured. This morning I held my son against my chest and breathed in his blonde hair, as if trying to inhale him into my body. He’s...
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