One day I was talking to some friends (one male and one female) from work about my experience as a female in that particular work place. I expressed my frustrations about how it felt like I could never advance, even though I had more education and experience than my male counterparts. There was never a […]
I feel guilty saying this – 2016 didn’t suck for me. It was hard in a communal sense and I sat in the tension of tragedy after tragedy and wept. But it also was an incredibly redemptive year personally. Starting in 2014, I moved back in with my parents. I had a cancer scare. I […]
I grew up in household that went to the movies. The Oscars were our Super Bowl and to this day, I get giddy at this time of year – awards season. Christmas breaks are often spent catching up on all of these films and internally I am ranking and rating them. One of the films […]
Last Friday evening I met with my church small group, as we do most Fridays. I felt a heaviness following the election and wondered what it might look like to create space for us to listen to each other in group. As a spiritual director, a major component of my training was learning how to […]
I still remember my dad knocking on my bedroom door that morning. I mumbled back that I was sleeping in – not running late. But he persisted in knocking and I heard the words “planes” and “Twin Towers”. In my sleepiness, I wondered how two planes could fly into these buildings, when it dawned on […]
Sustaining is a word that I have used a lot as a spiritual director and minister in the church. How do we remain sustainable in Christ? As a person who burned out from ministry in her mid-twenties (I was on the fast track), I had to shift in how I operated. Burn out was a […]
This morning I was reading in Luke about Mary’s response to some surprising news (AKA, you are going to give birth to the Messiah). After being blessed by her cousin Elizabeth, also dealing with a surprise pregnancy, she responds with what’s typically known as “The Magnificat” (from the Latin word ‘magnifies’): And Mary said, “My soul […]
As a child, the word Advent meant one thing and one thing alone. Chocolate! I remember each year trying to be patient and only eat the chocolate prescribed for that specific day. Usually, a sort of bargain happened where I would eat 2-5 chocolates and then wait the appropriate amount of days before indulging again. […]
Hi All, I wrote a blog for the Gifted for Leadership blog on my experience with the unexpected gift of burning out. I didn’t know when it was going live, so that was a lovely surprise to wake up to yesterday. I hope you enjoy the piece. My brother’s car sped off down the […]
And here I am, your invited guest— it’s incredible! I enter your house; here I am, prostrate in your inner sanctum, Waiting for directions to get me safely through enemy lines. Psalm 5:7-8 (The Message) You are an invited guest of God. Not just part of you, but all of you. Sometimes […]
This morning I was listening to “On Being” a radio program/podcast on human flourishing. A couple of years ago I caught a bit of the episode with Jean Vanier, founder of the L’Arche communities. I finally downloaded the podcast of this particular episode (which has been on my mental to do list ever since I […]
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we […]