Awkward Christian
First, let’s get this verse out of the way. Quickly. “The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.” Numbers 14:18, ESV This verse …
Beliefs I Wish Weren’t True: Sins of the Fathers Part 1Read More
I wanted to look forward to my older sister’s visit last year. But I was not entirely successful. It had been almost five years since Katie had last stayed at my house in San Diego. Lately, we’ve been growing closer, and last year I visited her a few times in Michigan. But her coming to …
One of the biggest surprises of facing a lot of my doubts about faith is realizing that when I dig down to the root of Christian theology, I agree, wholeheartedly, with so much of it. In fact, Jesus’ words about suffering and how to find freedom, have truly released me from prison. So I thought …
Inspired by my friend Addie’s second book, Night Driving. I was lucky that Sunday morning—the train was mostly empty and I scored a window seat. The whistle blew and we started juddering forward, me looking at the station, buildings, graffiti move away from me, picking up speed as the train accelerated. Out of the depths, I …
In page after page of scripture, laser-focused on my own shortcomings, I had missed God’s relentless, overwhelming grace. Instead, I had taken His powerful Word and used it as a weapon to punish myself. I am still recovering from reading the Bible that way.
I see you bullying a friend of yours in fourth grade. Your target is wearing white sneakers, and she doesn’t want to get them dirty in the mud. You laugh at her because they’re so glowing white they’re ridiculous against the cut of her not-cool jeans and her squared-off K-Mart t-shirt. This girl you’re trying to …
The book I use for daily prayer, The Divine Hours, includes a lot of confessions, like this classic: Almighty God, my heavenly Father: I have sinned against you, through my own fault, in thought, and word, and deed, and in what I have left undone. I wince almost every time I read this prayer. It’s cliché to wince …
I insist this is a love story. I was twelve or 13, and I was in bed, crying, because earlier that day, I looked down at one of the desks I passed in class, and saw I hate Heather gouged into the wood with a blade. I was hoping my mom would hear my crying that night. …
I Insist This Is A Love Story: For SheLoves MagazineRead More
The other day I got an email from a reader about a really hard situation with her in-laws. She has been through a financial hell because of them, and they are completely unrepentant and unconcerned about it. In fact, they blame her for everything. She worried that she sounded like “a bad daughter in-law.” Her words …
When my sister Katie was 22, she took a job as a preschool teacher at a Christian church. She laughed, blithely, as she told me about it in one of our sporadic phone calls. She was in charge of twenty three-year-olds for a full day. Most of her students had not been fully potty trained. …
What Am I Willing To Do For Wholeness? For SheLoves MagazineRead More
For a three-month stretch when I was seven or eight, I tried to learn how to pray. When I couldn’t sleep, I’d pull a children’s prayer book down from the shelf and move it to the crack of light that shone in from the hallway. I opened it up to the Lord’s Prayer and read …
I wrote some Advent reflections back in summer and fall, because I feel too overwhelmed in the holiday. This year, apparently, I decided to write about emotions–the lack of them, or having the kind we don’t want. Also, wow: I am a little melancholic at Christmas. I hope it provides space for you to let …
Waiting instead of doing: The beauty of the Advent acheRead More
I used to think that submission was passive. It’s why, working at the campus bookstore at my university, I ignored the shelves of women’s studies books, sure that picking up even one would mean not submitting to God’s design for me. It’s why, after realizing that women were not allowed to serve communion at my …
Earlier this month, protests about race erupted at several American colleges. The uproar began at the University of Missouri, where the chancellor and president resigned over their responses to racially charged harassment. Meanwhile at Yale, an official email about avoiding racist Halloween costumes, such as blackface, inspired one faculty member’s response asking for “free speech and the …
College Can Kill Our Colorblindness (If We Let It): For Her.meneuticsRead More
I suffer from anxiety. Early the other morning, I woke before the sun was up, as I sometimes do. I stumbled to the bathroom, hoping that would help me fall back to sleep, but when I got back in bed, my body was on fire. The stomachache that had plagued me for three days came …
Why I’m Grateful for My Anxiety for SheLoves MagazineRead More
Tanya Marlow is another Mudroom and SheLoves contributor, and she writes bracingly about suffering, theology, and faith. She’s also bedridden most of the time. I’m grateful for her voice, and her experience, because she’s both honest about how sucky her disease is, and also fiercely wise about what God teaches her through it. She makes me …
It is a gift to know a suffering God: One Woman’s Yes with Tanya MarlowRead More
The night before I left college, I got home late. There, at my door, I found a wrapped package: a graduation gift from Stacy, one of my closest friends from church. She’d finished and framed an exquisite cross-stitch of one of my favorite verses. The sight made my heart sink. I’d missed saying goodbye. The …
What I Wish I’d Known About Friendship After CollegeRead More
I used to have a kind of waking nightmare. It started in college. I’d be alone in the dorm bathroom, my toiletry caddy in hand, going down the aisle of shower stalls, their white plastic curtains like ghosts’ hems, all in a row. All of a sudden, the dread of what lay behind those curtains …
Are you willing to listen to the darkness? for The MudroomRead More
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 …
“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 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 …
The Night I Almost Stopped Being a Christian: for The MudroomRead More
“Rub the Buddha belly, Rylee,” my older sister, Katie, said to her daughter. Rylee smiled up at me and gingerly put her hand on the crest of my pregnant abdomen. She moved it back and forth, with a hesitant, irritating judder. I smiled, but had to grit my teeth to not swat her hand away. …
The other day, I rolled out my dusty purple yoga mat in my bedroom, and stood at one end, ready to launch into my usual fifteen minute yoga routine. On a whim, I thought, why not set an intention for this practice? This is unusual. Generally, I don’t bother with intentions or thoughtfulness. I often …
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 …
