I take pride in my honesty. In my therapy sessions, I don’t flinch when my therapist questions my motives. People often remark on my honest writing. It doesn’t bother me to tell my unadorned story to complete strangers. But sometimes I lie. Here’s how: Someone I love asks me to do something. I know it …
Easy faith is authentic faith
Back when I was doing quiet times for a half-hour every day in college, I would put off starting as long as possible. Sometimes, that meant I procrastinated until the next day, and when I’d open my notebook, the shame of my indifference towards God and His Word sickened my stomach. Not that long ago, I …
When You Don’t Have a Peaceful Heart
I find rest in Esther Emery’s words–partially because I can see something of my anxious childhood in hers, partially because she has chosen to be different in a world that loves same, and also because she’s a friend of the virtual-but-real sort. I bring you her words here today with relish. I love her take …
Easy faith is good news ALL THE TIME
(Note: occasionally I curse. This is one of those times. Here’s why.) I want to be careful with this series. I’m worried it might get chirpy on you. “Just depend on Jay-sus!” “God is good all the time!” “Can I get an Ay-men?” I mean, those things are true. Except sometimes, their cheerfulness makes you want to …
Easy faith is just faith
It feels odd to talk about easy yokes and JUSTICE together. Shouldn’t we affirm the warm, fuzzies first? Jesus will love you no matter what, that he’s a friend, a Father, a Mother, a Spirit, an everything? Oh, all that is true. But I will be honest: I don’t think there’s warm fuzzies without justice. I don’t think …
Simplify things and point your face towards the sun
Today, we’re talking more about tools for a faith that’s easy—really easy. Last week we discussed questions, attention and emptiness. This week: simplicity and delight. Simplicity I feel passionate about ading the discrimination against Latinos in my town, and breaking down walls between us in church. But I have not thrown myself into doing something. …
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Questioning and Paying Attention Lead Us to an Easy Yoke
When you have done all you could in faith, and realized that doing is a problem— What do you do next? How do you get out of that catch-22? How do you let go without just giving up? I’m going to do a series for a while here about how to find an easy yoke …
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Asking Questions Out Loud is Women’s Work
“Can you tell me what this verse means?” Ellen asked. She glanced at her Bible and read, “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says.” She looked up at the pulpit, where our pastor, a prematurely gray-haired man, stood during the …
The Night I Almost Stopped Being a Christian: for The Mudroom
The night I almost stopped being a Christian anymore, I sat alone, at midnight, in the living room of the house I shared with three other women. I was twenty-two, almost six months out of college, depressed, and despairing. I’d discovered I was depressed in my therapist’s office the summer before. The revelation was like a pin …
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Faith at Every Size
My old friend Michelle came over not that long ago. She’s blonde, with streaks of aqua blue through her short cut. Ever since I first met her, I’ve admired her confidence in who she is and what she wants to do with her life. Also, she’s fat. I would not have used that word for her …
Deciding you’re an outsider—and deciding you’re not
My sister Katie, and I were talking about social anxiety recently—something we both struggle with a lot. “My therapist said I always automatically assume I’m an outsider,” she said. “I hold myself away from people and assume I’m on the outside of what they’re doing. And she said that attitude is a choice, and I can …
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Dirty is human: #wordmadeart
This post might offend some people—especially at the beginning. Bear with me and read the whole thing, and then see if you are still offended. This week’s project is getting a page of an old Bible dirty. I knew it would make me nervous. I did not expect it to make me cry. The easy part was deciding where …
Trusting the Church After Abuse
Last weekend, I sent my daughters to Sunday school at church. It’s the same church where my best friend was raped repeatedly in high school. Our family begins worship together. The head pastor—not the one who was there, intentionally blind, when our youth pastor violated my friend—raises a hand of blessing over the kids. “You …
When Your Scruples Suffocate You
Every night, after my kids are tucked in bed, I begin. The two books are stacked on my er, one on top of the other. The fatter book has a gold cross emblazoned on its black cover. The taller book is a Moleskine notebook. Next to the stack is a black felt-tipped pen. I sit …
The Gospel According to Nine Inch Nails
I was alone in my parents’ house when Nine Inch Nails helped change my life. It was a few months after college graduation. I was listening to music while I packed everything—after just unpacking. Not long before, my mom had told me I had two weeks to get out. It was just me, a bass …
I thought I’d do a new friend a favor and not make friends at all
I realized Joy went to church with me on Pentecost Sunday. I sat with my parents at the special outdoor service, held in the local high school stadium. In the bleachers before it began, I shaded my eyes with my hand to see the stage. There was a girl up there. A girl my age. Joy. …
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Yoga, Cultural Appropriation, and Hospitality: For Christ and Pop Culture
My first prenatal yoga class, I tried to pretend the picture didn’t bother me. It was huge—at least five feet tall, framed imposingly, colored in bright pinks and blues as if the figure had posed on the beach at sunset. She was a Hindu goddess, I thought. I didn’t know which, or have any idea …
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When God Stitches Me Together
I can’t tell if I’m in a mending or tearing season. Those two opposites seem of the same piece the more I live them. As soon as I tear something, the work of mending starts, and the mending does not start without the tearing. Faith can’t exist without active, often painful engagement. It’s not enough, sometimes, …
Four Questions that Saved My Faith
I used to be afraid of asking questions about my faith. I avoided reading up controversial topics because the arguments might chip away at beliefs. I tried not to notice my cynicism or bitterness about Christian media or church services or spiritual practices. The problem was that the longer I ignored my questions, the weaker …
When theology is like a bad diet
My friend and I were talking about theology the other day. She comes from a more conservative background than I do, and told me that she has been thinking a lot about some of her beliefs—core beliefs of her upbringing—and wondering if she really, truly believes them. Prone to wander, my friend said of her penchant for …
Grieving the Bible
I read the Bible all the way through for the first time when I was thirteen. I picked it up every Sunday after the first service at our new church in San Diego, waiting for my parents to finish with choir. I’d pull the volume off the shelf in the church library, get a chunk …
I am trying to forgive my grandmother. Here’s why.
(Trigger warning—sexual abuse) My grandmother is slight, white-haired, slow to speak, and nearly lost to dementia. For a year or so now, she has been in a nursing home, unwillingly. Years ago when I would visit, she would serve me breakfast: a bowl of fresh home-grown raspberries in a white bowl, or toast with homemade freezer jam that …
Tearing apart my Bible for SheLoves Magazine
When I was little, I would trail my mom to the fabric store nearly every month. It was middling in my list of errands: no toys, but the pattern books did provide some pre-Pinterest craft browsing. My mom would finger washable silk or ultra-suede, and I’d flip pages, trying to be patient. Once she decided, we’d …
When prayer loses its meaning, what then?
My writing buddy Kelly O’Dell Stanley entrusted me with this gem of a guest post–a letter to herself as a girl. Her new book, Praying Upside Down, released last week, and I’m so honored to share some of her gorgeous thoughts on what can come after our earnest prayers lose their meaning. Dear, sweet girl. You lie …