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How to Make a Legacy Bible for Someone You Love
I found my daughter sitting at the kitchen table, and tears pooled in my eyes before I said a single word. There were so many things I wanted to say, so many things I still wanted to teach and show...
View ArticleA Lesson from Two Sick Pigs, A Herd of Hogs, and a Divine Farmer Named Jesus
I live on a fifth-generation family farm in Iowa, and it never ceases to amaze me how farm life offers a metaphorical window into the human experience. In particular, I’ve been in awe over how the...
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View ArticleBut How Are You REALLY Doing Right Now?
A few weeks ago, I got sick with a fever that wouldn’t go away. On one of the worst nights of my sickness, I slipped away to the couch, so that my tossing and turning wouldn’t wake up my husband. I...
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Table of One
I’m in the booth to your left, the one tucked up against the corner of the restaurant. It smells like fries and bacon, and the waitress brings two glasses of water in tall mason jars. I picked this...
View ArticleThe Surprising Gifts Waiting in Your Coldest Winter
A few weeks ago, our part of the world was hit with subzero temperatures – the kind of temps that had my friends posting memes that said things like, “Why do I live where the air hurts my face?” It was...
View ArticleWhere Did All the Empathy Go?
When my brother John was a baby, and I was three, Mom decided she wanted to have a professional portrait taken of the two of us. We didn’t have a photography studio in the little town where we lived,...
View ArticleThis Is the Amount of Faith You Need
Many years ago, a friend gave me a heart-shaped necklace with a mustard seed tucked inside. The mustard seed was so small, you had to look really close to see it. At the time, that’s how my faith felt....
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What Would It Take to Get This Honest With God?
Here’s what I think we all need: Our own little confession booths – places where we can get ruthlessly honest with God, and with ourselves. Places where we can bare our souls, stop self-protecting, and...
View ArticleRead This if Your Child Has Strayed from the Faith
When I was 18 years old, I wasn’t sure what I thought about Jesus. And I certainly wasn’t sure what I thought about some people who professed Christianity. Intellectually, I had become increasingly...
View ArticleNo, You Don’t “Got This”
A sweet friend sent me a message on Snapchat. The image was her darkened living room, with curtains drawn, and I knew immediately that this dear soul had fallen into a deep malaise. Over the top of the...
View ArticleWhen You Have to Walk Through Hell on Your Way to Heaven
At points in my life, I’ve endured the kind of suffering that shakes the faith in which I have professed for most of my adult life. Deep suffering like this can be so great that it nearly shatters your...
View ArticleYou Can Start Over
I’ll never forget when we announced to our colleagues and friends that we were leaving our jobs in the city to move to my husband’s family farm. We were stressed out and overworked, and at the pace we...
View ArticleThis Christmas, Let it Slow, Let it Slow, Let it Slow
For years, after Christmas had drawn to a close, I would sit by the glow of the tree, exhausted from yet another season of running too hard. I was the queen of the Try-Hard Christmas. I tried hard to...
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You’re Not Failing. You’re Learning.
My 84-year-old mom recently spent several weeks in the hospital battling an infection. During her stay, she lost a lot of physical strength and had to eventually relearn many daily tasks — tasks that...
View ArticleHow Are You Really Doing with the “Other Stuff”?
A few weeks ago, I got sick with a fever that wouldn’t go away. On one of the worst nights of my sickness, I slipped away to the couch, so that my tossing and turning wouldn’t wake up my husband. I...
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