Everything is Important

I think one of the most courageous things you can do is to keep showing up for your life. 

I am not where I want to be, not in terms of healing, personal goals, relationships, overcoming the impossible standard of…

When someone is nearing death and speaking their last words to those around them, those words suddenly become some of the most important words they will ever hear. 

It’s no longer a distracted audience. 

No one is scrolling their phone…

We’ve been lied to from the beginning. 

The worst part of the story of the fall in Genesis 3 was not their disobedience to a command God had given them. God knew, after all, that we would all have this…

Your body- your mind, soul and spirit is 100% for you 100% of the time. 

I've had to remind myself of that in recent years, since my later thirties and the birth of my daughter ushered in hormonal issues that…

“I didn’t want to just work at that place,” he told me from across the table with a sheepish grin. 

“I wanted to own the place.” 

He was telling me about the first place he worked upon release from prison…

Beloved, can I tell us both something that is really hard to hear? 

I promise it’s a truth that is an ally and a friend if we are willing to let it do its work. 

It’s time to stop making…

The journey home to self was one of the longest that I ever faced. 

There were events and lies I believed that carried me away from the place of youth and innocence, where I was once carefree and viewed the…

Dear 2021, 

You legit broke my heart and I am still on the long road of mending. My 10,000 pictures hold the proof, of hard seasons of transition and uprooting, of sitting in laundromats when it…

Journal Entry: December 25th, 2013 

37 days and a wake from release… 

“I woke up at 7AM and made fudge to pass out. Also woke up with 5 Christmas cards under my door. One was from…

Sometimes we need a counter-voice to the one inside our head. So I put myself back in counseling. I say that with zero shame, one- because it’s healthy to recognize and be able to admit when you need…

I sat across a table from my dad a few days ago. 5 years have passed since we last saw each other. I don’t say that as an indictment towards either of us, but merely for context and…

Maybe the secret to surviving any form of loss and pain is to lean harder into love. To open our heavy hearts, to make more room in them, to pull out a chair and invite someone to sit…

Perhaps the most agonizing part of our worst moments of pain is not the event itself, but the feeling that we are alone in it. 

On the day that I went into the backyard and found our…

One of the greatest temptations when going through a loss or difficult time is this human tendency towards “comparative suffering.” It's when we compare our pain or experience to another person’s, and then often determine ours as less…

She told me today from the backseat that one day she is going to be taller and won't need her car seat anymore. 

“Yes, ” I agreed. “You will outgrow it and won't need it anymore.” 

…

I stopped by the coffee shop today after Patrick sent a text to tell me my former attorney was at the shop. 

It has been years since I last saw him. He represented me 13 years ago…

Firm. Fair. Consistent. Love. 

I spent the first 3 years of my incarceration training dogs and it saved my life in a thousand ways. It helped absorb my grief when I felt like I would die from…

This photo was taken 2 years ago today and here’s a little reminder that it will come to pass, whatever your “it” is. 

King David was given the anointing for his future position as King when he…

There are no throwaways. 

I received a call recently about someone in my life who had relapsed, again. 

I didn't feel disappointed or frustrated. Instead, I felt heartbroken. 

I know some of her details. I…

I watched a family of geese with a small gosling in tow as they tried to cross a four-lane road today. It was a forty-five-mile-per-hour zone with cars zipping by in both directions, and I held my breath…

About a year ago, I felt this phrase in my spirit: 

“No one is coming to save you. You have to save yourself.” 

Initially, it felt like some self-help, motivational cliche, or a phrase that would…

I remember the time I sat on my top bunk in Marysville and wrote a letter to Caleb’s kindergarten teacher. I had been gone from home for about six months and I could hardly bear the thought of…

I sat with someone recently whose heart is broken like a million pieces of pottery smashed onto the ground. 

Breakups are brutal and just because you’re 15 years into a marriage, don’t act like you don’t remember…

I almost wrote out an invitation to my brother. 

It was this fraction of a second that happened while sitting at my dining room table scribing invitations for my son’s graduation party. 

It’s a celebratory moment…