"I feel like seventy-five percent of my relationships are stressful right now," I admitted to Will as I watched his skilled fingers smooth wood filler into the nail holes of the cabinet he was making for me.While Will's hands shaped the cabinet-wood, he listened to me in his gentle and wise way. He didn't try …
Participating with God during the COVID-19 pandemic
The internet is an overwhelming place right now. Yesterday Will and I discussed it as I dropped sweet corn seeds into a newly-tilled patch of earth in our front yard. "It's like walking into a room where 30 people are all screaming at you," Will said. The current coronavirus pandemic has made many people nearly …
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Changing the World by Listening
The world is full of noise. If you are like me, you find it very overwhelming. Social media hasn't helped curb the constant stream of ideas, feelings, and opinions flooding our personal spaces. I have often thought about the lost art of listening. I believe one of the primary ways that God touches broken lives …
bittersweet
Thank you to all of you who kindly offered advice on dealing with winter. Spring is slowly coming; I feel it in the air. Days of warm, windy weather are mixing in with the cold spells, and certainly the green cannot stay away for long! Today is one of those warm, windy days. I'm sitting …
Winter
Every winter I hit that spot when it feels like winter will never leave. Here in Kansas we don't even have the beauty of glistening snow to brighten our days; except for rare snowfalls, the days are an endless succession of shades of brown. The trees are brown, the grass is brown, the street is …
Being raised Amish-Mennonite, and what it taught me
Recently a friend asked if I would write about some of the good things I've experienced from my heritage. I thought about it for a while, because describing the Amish-Mennonite way of life is much more complicated than it may seem at first glance. Amish and Mennonite denominations have huge variations among their congregations. Even …
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Shame and Criticism
Is shame the only thing that grows into criticism? Is criticism always based in shame? Some of you asked these questions after I wrote about criticism's mother. No. As I stated in my last post, criticism can be healthy. Even in unhealthy criticism, other causes can be present such as pride and hardness of heart. …
Criticism’s mother
Once in a while, a perplexity that has fogged my brain for a long time suddenly clears. That happened to me last weekend when I attended Inspire, a women's retreat in Indiana. The keynote speaker spent her sessions giving us a good dose of much-needed Christian psychology. Understanding how we are put together and how …
Writing, and better things
I'm slowly working on writing a post about being raised Amish Mennonite* and what it taught me. It's been an interesting subject to think about, especially after five years of living outside an Amish Mennonite community. Spoiler alert: I'm still very Amish-y. But writing is hard to get done these days, with a precious and …
Small Town Church
As our gray Ford Expedition pulled onto the road this morning, we caught a glimpse of our neighbor's blue Expedition speeding down a side street. "He's racing us!" Will said, laughing, finding his own shortcuts to take. We hurled down a back alley only to lose the race by a few seconds. But we all …
