What Guides You?

“Instead of overcoming her personal problems, she was guided by them.” I read this in the news about a reality TV star, a twice pregnant teenager, whose life is in shambles. How many of us are guided by our failures? Our fears? Our labels and losses? Years ago, I was given a fierce and final gift. My Uncle Dan chose to spend his last hours on this earth with me. Then he went home and hung himself in his garage. He didn’t tell me he was going to do it. But in those sweet, summer hours we sat and talked […]

Making It Happen Until God Happened

Jacob came from the womb grasping his brother’s heel. I was born grasping too. Wrestling for my birthright: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For years I thought the American dream was true. And I had to fight for it. Make it happen. But instead sin happened, bringing death, slavery, and the pursuit of emptiness.   And then I was saved. Born again. Joined the church. And as the years rolled by, I found myself grasping all over again. Esau’s heel. Make it happen. In the company of other make-it-happen Christians. Then sin happened. Pride, pain, and the pursuit […]

HE MAKES ALL THINGS NEW

After church on Sunday, the day before my melanoma surgery, our family walked to the ravine on our property. There we welcomed our new year. With a black Sharpie pen in my pocket, I hunted for the perfect rock. The boys searched for their rocks, too. Cami joined us down at the water to find her own rock while Scott and Drew stood up on the cliff, husband shepherds watching their sheep. We all wanted out with the old and in with the new. So we took our rocks and wrote our battles on them. Cruz didn’t do any writing, but threw […]

Snow in Jerusalem

The Battle For Joy

Last year when I changed my blog to Barefoot… Living a life vulnerable to God… I made the decision I would live my life purposefully, playfully, prayerfully. I would hug my kids more, stop and stick my toes in the clover of our lawn more, be still and know God more, and it never occurred to me this would be hard. Not just hard, but battle hard, one big war hard to live this out joyfully.2012 was like a boxing match. Going round for round with an invisible enemy set on stealing my joy. The really hard punch came last week, right before […]

THE HOLY ONE

“Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever”  Psalm 118:1 NIV.  I grew up Catholic. In mass we would chant this verse over and over, and I don’t remember it being meaningful to me. Back then, I could repeat this scripture in my sleep, and probably did. It’s easy to sleep in church when your spirit is asleep. And this isn’t just a Catholic problem. The Protestant church is full of sleeping souls. For years I was like this, resting in my religion, rituals ruling my life. In the pew, I found the power of […]