If you ask me how Covid-19 has affected me personally, I feel a gaping numbness inside. I may be a nurse and one of "those" essential workers, but the time-consuming job of covering up from head to toe like a masked robber and ramming a swab far into the nether regions of a patient's head …
Category: Hearing God
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 …
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 …
Why I Write
One of the best parts about blogging is the emails I receive from readers. I always feel honored to be allowed a peek into their hearts and lives. So many good friendships have been forged through these online connections. Occasionally I get feedback that could be helpful to improving the blog. One such email this …
When God doesn’t heal, and what it says about faith
Often I hear a particular narrative that bothers me. I just heard it again from a respectable pastor in a conservative, Bible-believing church. The scenario goes something like this. A man we will call Daniel gets very sick. He goes to the doctor and discovers that he is full of cancer. Now Daniel loves Jesus …
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The only way out is through
Someone asked me again recently how I became deaf. I always feel slightly awkward answering the question because the answer is complicated. Also, how do I speak of such a traumatic thing so casually, as if I'm discussing the weather? The short version of the story is that I was born completely deaf in one …
Thoughts about deconstruction
Joshua Harris, the hugely successful author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye, shook the evangelical world a few weeks ago when he announced he was deconstructing and leaving the Christian faith. Listening to the conversations regarding Harris (and others), I've realized that many people have misconceptions of what deconstruction actually is and how it fits into a …
Why I don’t teach my children unquestioning obedience, Part 2 of 2
Mostly I avoid getting involved in discussions about parenting, because opinions are a dime a dozen although dearly held and too often used to hurt people. Parenting is the hardest job I've ever done, and one that unfortunately receives more judgment than grace from many. However, recently a friend emailed me about a child-training boot-camp …
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