Category: Faith & Formation

  • Manchester by the Sea and Sticky Grief

    Recently I have been thinking about my Aunt Linda. When I was little, she would take me out for my birthday – it was always such a special day. We would start at McDonald’s, make our way to the movies for the latest Disney film, and then make a final stop at a toy store,…

  • Hidden Figures and Sins of Omission

    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…

  • La La Land and the Discipline of Celebration

    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…

  • Arrival and the Prophetic Call to Listen

    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…

  • Listening Together

    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…

  • What Formed You – 9/11

    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 versus Regenerating

    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…

  • Advent Resources

    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.…

  • New Post on Gifted for Leadership

    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…

  • Your Invitation

    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…