home and hurting and healed
(Thank you for the prayers that winged me home and back to the farm in the very dark, early morning hours today. I am exhausted and broken and healed and groping for words for what has happened in my...
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the one word that fixes a broken heart, this broken world
Water runs down the middle of the alley, a silver tear in the shadows, and I can hear a baby crying. I’m walking a narrow Guatemalan City street, a street without house numbers, mailboxes, doorbells —...
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when you want the first step in fixing a broken world
I don’t know really how to come back to this space. What to write about, what to say, what doesn’t sound flippant, indifferent… negligent. When our Compassion team debriefed on our last night in...
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there’s only a harvest when we break out of the mold
All along the far side of the field, the pods tangle, hang waiting in the gilded and the swollen and the tractor keeps pressing alongside for the filling, the combine reel spinning, a ferris wheel...
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where in the world, in all this world, is God?
It is the stench of the place. The rotting flesh, the burning rubber, the foul festering and decay. I’m a farmer’s daughter, a farmer’s wife, and this is what I know: I’ve fed hogs and I’ve extracted...
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when you’re dying to live radical: Fight the Middle Ground
Thirty one days I have been home now. It’s walking through Walmart that I know I haven’t forgot. That I am petrified I might. It’s walking past the aisle of towels and dishcloths and tablecloths,...
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when you’re called to The Insignificant Significant
The child who lifted up a corner of my life and upended me was born on Remembrance Day and I am now three thousand miles away and two time zones to the east and how can I forget? It was her eyes....
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To Set Up a Complete Nativity Scene:
It’s Day 85 of my life-after Guatemala that I set out the nativity; it’s only now that I remember that the baby would be about 85 days old too. It’s my only souvenir from Guatemala — a red soil formed...
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what really happens when you give to the poor
The day her letter finally arrives, a letter from Xiomara, the girl in the middle of the frame and the only sponsored child I’ve met, I rip into it anxious, and part of me soars. We had wheeled happy...
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The problem of evil? The Greater Problem of Good?
So after dinner, she picks coneflowers in the garden. Cradles the long stems in her apron skirt, carries them up through the picket gate. And she turns to me on the top step of the porch, holds her...
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The One Secret for Real Change
When we get on that plane early Sunday morning, that airline flight attendant hands us pretzels. The kids all say thank you. And I’m grinning like a fool, knowing a bit of the miracle that’s coming....
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Don’t Read This. But READ THIS. Because WHO WOULD HAVE BELIEVED THIS would...
So there’s this 19-year-old cutter who laid down the blade in her hand and brandished a pen. And Mrs. Stoope, this 78-year-old Michigan grandma who has seven sons, her hair wrapped up in a white bun...
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The Real Secret to Being Healthy: Multivitamins for Your Weekend
So, the last two days, I’ve been struggling with this hounding fever, this sickness chilling up the underside of bones. And hey, who knows if you pick up something when you walk through slums, when you...
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Why Right Now is the Time to Shatter the Myth of ‘Not Enough’
When he got to the top of that wobbling ladder, he whipped out the pencil from behind his ear and marked an X. Marked an X on the ceiling of the church. And then drilled. The Farmer made this mark and...
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A North American Lent: When You Want to have an Appetite for More of God
She’d say it like she was dying. Nevermind that she’d been saying she was dying for the last 20 some years and yeah, we might have mocked and rolled our eyes. Why didn’t anyone grab our fool shoulders,...
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when you’re called to The Insignificant Significant
The child who lifted up a corner of my life and upended me was born on Remembrance Day and I am now three thousand miles away and two time zones to the east and how can I forget? It was her eyes....
View ArticleClik here to view.
To Set Up a Complete Nativity Scene:
It’s Day 85 of my life-after Guatemala that I set out the nativity; it’s only now that I remember that the baby would be about 85 days old too. It’s my only souvenir from Guatemala — a red soil formed...
View ArticleClik here to view.
what really happens when you give to the poor
The day her letter finally arrives, a letter from Xiomara, the girl in the middle of the frame and the only sponsored child I’ve met, I rip into it anxious, and part of me soars. We had wheeled happy...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The problem of evil? The Greater Problem of Good?
So after dinner, she picks coneflowers in the garden. Cradles the long stems in her apron skirt, carries them up through the picket gate. And she turns to me on the top step of the porch, holds her...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The One Secret for Real Change
When we get on that plane early Sunday morning, that airline flight attendant hands us pretzels. The kids all say thank you. And I’m grinning like a fool, knowing a bit of the miracle that’s coming....
View Article
