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2012

When where you are is not your home

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You live different. Your patterns change. You’re forced to adapt the way you eat and move about. This is good for me to experience. The instinct of my flesh is to settle, root, even in places where I can’t imagine it possible. Like here. As the orange dust gathered at my feet, I watched the Lord build a home for our family. And this house of grace is how he sustained me. It’s where I carved comfortable out of insecurity. Where the unknown became familiar. Even in the harsh realities of Uganda, the Lord was generous to shape for me […]

The Pearl of Africa {and of my heart}

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I was told my nose might not survive this place. That the odors themselves might send me running home. Thankfully, God let me breathe in grace. And it covered the biting smells near impossible to escape. The suffocating smoke of burning trash lingers down every road and travels through the open windows that invite the outdoors inside. And then there’s the unfamiliar body odor of a people with different customs and diet. And the periodic whiffs of urine from casual uses of the roadside as a lavatory. And the tangy scent of jack fruit that permeates the air when it’s […]

Praying Surrender Today

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It’s been easy to trust until now. There’s been distance and unknowing. Like a story you’re writing and I’m telling about someone else. But now my eyes have seen. My arms have held. And this changes everything. I know myself. My flesh will try to protect my heart with guard. My mind will wonder and doubt. My spirit will cling (maybe too tight) to the story. You know better than I how I like things my way. How I’d rather fail myself than for others to disappoint me. How I hold tight to what defines me and resent what challenges […]

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Departure Thoughts

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I’ll never forget the moment when I stepped foot off the plane in Uganda after visiting Michigan for a few months and thought I’m home. I genuinely never thought I would feel that way about a place so different than what I was used to. A place so dirty and stinky. A place where I was noticed everywhere I went. A place I didn’t always understand. A place where death seemed too real. When was it? I remember thinking.  Was it when the children started asking for beans and rice instead of macaroni and cheese? Was it when the women […]

You Will Lack Nothing

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I’ve done motherhood both ways. This body swelling all on its own and me going along for the ride. Never having to tell it what to do. Never having to tell my heart how to love because it gently grew in beat with the living soul inside me. And then there are the times when the stretching and pulling happened to my spirit, not my belly. I expanded in ways I didn’t know was possible. And as these two babies grew inside other women’s bodies, the joy of the Lord grew inside me. The natural and unnatural expanding of heart […]

Spirit-filled beauty: Creative Spaces

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When we color and design our world and spaces, we are reflecting a core characteristic of who God is and what he does. It’s the first revelation we know of him. He’s a creator. He created the material world we live in. He formed his people in flesh. And from this creation story, we witness a God who cares about the physical nature. Who makes all things beautiful. Not the shallow kind of beauty that exists to disguise a broken reality. Not the false kind of beauty sought after by those seeking perfection. The beauty God brings to his creation […]

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Bigger and Brighter

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Saturday night’s sky held a supermoon. This special moon happens once a year when a full moon occurs at the point when it’s closest to the Earth. From our perspective the moon appears bigger and brighter than usual. I stepped outside around midnight to catch a glimpse. Sure enough, the dark night glowed different. Through the parting shallow clouds a bright moon illuminated the black sky. These pictures I found online are similar to what I saw. I appreciate unusual occurrences such as this. They’re reminders that the celestial world our God created is active. In orbit. And in relationship […]

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Spirit-filled Beauty: a theology of creative design

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Before I talk parties and color and design, I must nest it all in some theology. Mark and I can’t spend hard earned money on making a barn cute or designing our house with color and comfort, without having good theological conversations first. Wish you were a fly on our walls during those? Probably not, but I assure you they’re fun! So, stick with me a minute… We influence our environment, and our environment influences us. It’s the reality of being flesh, not just spirit. We’ve been created as physical beings deeply shaped by the material world we live in. […]

Praying Mercy Today

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You say you desire mercy, not sacrifice. What does that mean? Cause I thought sacrifice was the way to live Christian. The way to give of myself for another. But your word is true. So I wrestle with it. And I realize something. I can sacrifice my money for the cause of another. But it’s not really giving myself. And I can sacrifice part of my day to help someone, without really entering into their need. To sacrifice is to offer. The act of giving up something that is mine for someone else. These burnt offerings are not meaningless. They […]

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When things come full circle

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There’s a sense of wholeness. Completion. For the present somehow points to the beginning. The now is deeply connected to the then. And the moment we find ourselves suddenly intensifies. Because the story reads rich as we remember together where God took us to, where he’s brought us from, and the place we now stand. A full circle. Of experiences. Of community. Of journey. Seven years ago in May, our family traveled for the first time to Uganda. One month. Three kids. And a baggage of anticipation and anxiety. This wasn’t just any visit. It was a “we’ve never been […]

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