It’s always risky to share a hotel room with a stranger. Some would call it crazy. But I did it anyway. Lest you think I’m completely out of my mind, the risk was mitigated by the fact that my roommate and I were both women attending a Christian Writers conference in Estes Park, Colorado. By the … [Read more...] about How I Learned about “Murder, Motherhood & Miraculous Grace”
Faith
When “Let Go and Let God” is Bad Advice
Around here, and maybe in your back yard too, the crops are drying up. Days are shorter. Evenings are cooler. Sunflowers have bowed their heads and corn stalks have gone crispy. The landscape isn't as lovely as it was this summer, but brown fields mean harvest time is coming. It's a perfect metaphor … [Read more...] about When “Let Go and Let God” is Bad Advice
When the Story Comes True
It was a story I’d heard all my life, or a version of it anyway. Yesterday, it came true. My grandpa, the same one I wrote about last summer, who’s systematic prayer life explains a lot about my own life, was a storyteller extraordinaire. Besides that, he had learned his mother's tried and true … [Read more...] about When the Story Comes True
An Easter Ballad for the Day In Between
I can trace my love of imaginative, biblical narrative round and round the grooves of an LP 33 speed record album. Maybe you don’t remember, but a record album (pronounced reh-kerd al-buh-m) was in popular use shortly after the invention of the wheel and hieroglyphics--or so it seems. In … [Read more...] about An Easter Ballad for the Day In Between
Unlikely Reasons for Gratitude: Change
In 1987 on their debut album, the group Exposé had a song called "Seasons Change." It was a pop culture lament over lost love and time. Thirty years later that song still occasionally gets stuck in my head. "Change" gets a bad rap, especially in the song. But recently I've been really thankful … [Read more...] about Unlikely Reasons for Gratitude: Change
Prayer: What difference does it make?
Every morning, for nine days in a row, I listened. My eyes were supposed to be closed, but instead I watched a few left over Wheaties swell and sink in my cereal bowl. In the summer before my freshman year I stayed with my grandparents while they were building a house. Since they were handy, … [Read more...] about Prayer: What difference does it make?