faith

  • Living

      Yesterday, I was driving home and found my street the color of clay, flooded with a couple of inches of water, and police officers on the scene. It seemed there had been a water-main break, and it compromised both the road and the water source for the surrounding houses. In the hours that followed,…

  • 914 (part two)

      There are six or eight little white utility vans that zip around the university campus where I live, and I often see them while running, walking the dog or sitting on my porch. The vans are identical except for the drivers, whom I never notice, and their three digit license plate numbers, which I…

  • 914 (part one)

    I was done with signs. Done with trusting the intuition I felt God had given me from being in constant communication and relationship with him. Done with scanning my life, both exterior and interior, for leadings, messages, and hope. I felt cast off from my former status of much-loved-dear-daughter and it hurt. The saddest part…

  • Page

    When I was a child, my faith life was whatever my parents taught me. There was a loving God, and rules, and if you did the right thing, and helped your neighbor, all would be well. If my early-adult life was a house, I would have painted one room ‘religion’, another ‘family’, another ‘work’, another…

  • Date

    Very early in the morning on a particular date and time last summer, I was praying. Praying desperately, as I remember it, for something to change, or for my perspective to change, or for something to shift within me. I was discouraged, disoriented, and without direction, and it felt like it was all crashing in.…

  • Rizpah

    My devotional led me to a scripture I’ve never read, and I can’t seem to let it go. In second Samuel, we hear the story of Rizpah.  She was a concubine of Saul, and by no fault of her own, had her two sons taken from her in repayment for Saul’s bloody deeds. Along with…

  • Yet

    All my devotionals are telling me that this is a time for self-control, spine-straightening, and steadiness. No surprise then that those concepts feel to me in this season like castor oil and I’m the child who will not open her mouth. I know enough to know that my will does not always lead to contentment;…

  • Sky

    It’s been a year since I started taking pictures of the sky and posting them to an album on Facebook. I’ve taken pictures on walks, on runs, at social occasions, at funerals, sports events, and anywhere I’ve found myself. I’ve taken pictures through all four seasons, day and night, in all kinds of weather. Some…

  • Holey

    When I was in high school, we used to put our reports into these clear plastic folders and there was a hard plastic, skinny, tube-shaped part that clipped on to the seam to secure the loose papers. I think they still have them. Anyway, the clear plastic folder always kind of stuck to itself and…

  • Strive

    Sometimes I make things happen and sometimes I let things happen. The good things, I mean. When I look back on opportunities I’ve had in life, I see that they’ve happened both ways, but mostly they’re a bit of a mix. When I started my preschool music teaching business, I didn’t necessarily know that’s what…