never been here before

So I had to bake a peach pie. Those words came into my mind on my drive to work this morning.  The trail to get there went something like this:Memories of feeling left out -> a chosen blog post -> a forgotten chosen blog post - > bread -> sacramental baking -> I had to bake a peach pie (Welcome to my brain.) I wrote about making that pie in a blog post a couple of years ago. I wrote it in response to author Preston Yancey’s call for submissions for his blog on the theme “An Everlasting Meal and a Movable Feast: where food and faith intersect.” He was taking a break from posting while he finished up his first book, Tables in the Wilderness . In the end, he had 90 submissions and only 12 spots to fill. I was one of the “chosen” 12. I was chosen among a lot of other amazing authors I respected and loved their words very much. (Some of them had published books!)  It felt like a huge honor. And then he forgot to post it. He posted it later as an “op...

I admit it, the second I saw this Netflix trailer, my heart soared. I love Gilmore Girls and it’s always my go-to binge watch show when I need some joy.  Because the creators of the show left before Season 7, I always felt cheated out of a great ending. So that is my explanation for my heart soaring. I’ve been watching the show on and off for the last couple of months, and when the November 25 date was announced, I read some pieces in the vein of , “Episodes you must watch for the reboot comes out.” But they were all subpar and clearly not written by true fans of the show. Yes, I’m that fan. If you have already seen all the episodes, but want a refresher before November 25, this list is for you. There are episodes that are needed for plot points, but I didn’t include them if they weren't at the very top of the Gilmore Girl game. If I included episodes that help with major plots points, you might as well just re-watch the whole show. Plus, Netflix was great to put ...

How do you know? When it’s time to build? Time to tear down? Time to repair? Time to start over? My own life feels like a series of tearing down and tearing down. Then building part of something.  Then tearing it down again. (You always build it better the second time around) Some things need to be destroyed in order for the world to be better. For your family to be better. For you to be better. But there is something so sacred about what you built that tearing it down feels like you are ripping your heart right out of your chest. Because you don’t build something that doesn’t matter to you. Good or bad. You build it precisely because you believe it’s important. Necessary. Key to your life’s happiness. So to tear that down means more then just tear it down . It means tearing yourself down. Which means you have to build something else. Which was hard enough the first time, right? But when what you built must be torn down it means so much of w...

I've always wished I was one of those "soft" people. Not weak, of course. But tender. With no rough edges. The kind of person whose presence makes you feel calm. The kind of soft that responds carefully and with compassion, rather than jumping to judgement and self-righteousness and a "my way is right" way of thinking. Without defense and thought of how it all affects me, but considers what else might be going on in the situation. A very soft person has come into my life recently. I'm in awe of her. She responds to everything in love. She is always concerned for me and how I am adjusting to a whole new life. She is ready to jump in and help whenever it's needed, and often anticipates needs I could never foresee. When a difficult situation arises, she has this way of making it all better without compromise for what is best. She is modeling to me the great fruit of the spirit: gentleness. I've far too often felt like a bull in a china shop. Stu...

There are many reasons Good Friday is a sad day for me. It’s the day I lost my grandfather when I was 14 years old. It’s the day my Savior died. It’s the last day I spoke to one of my best friends. So… not my favorite day. The sorrow of the day is only compounded by my tradition of watching The Passion of the Christ . Why do I torture myself when the day is already sad? Because I believe that in order to fully experience the joy of Sunday I must enter into sorrow of Good Friday. We need Good Friday, or Easter Sunday just becomes a day of eggs hunts and dressing up in our Sunday best. We need Good Friday because of our sin, not just our salvation. (We simply can’t have one without the other.) We need Good Friday because God’s wrath is fully expressed on this day, so his mercy means all the more in the days following. We need Good Friday because we needed a Savior. And God gave us one. I wish this day didn’t have so many painful memories attached ...

I went through those double doors for the last time, and briefly paused as I heard the glass door rattle behind me as they latched. From what seemed out of nowhere, my heart filled with sadness and tears threatened to brim over as I realized the chapter I was closing in my life. For the last two and half years, this place was my Monday night home. I would go there for over two hours and wrestle with God’s word. And I got to do it with women who were wrestling just like me. This had become a sweet community, and especially in the last year, the community I desperately  needed to get through some extremely tough times. And this community that was a large part of why I chose to stay in Arizona when faced with that choice last summer. But now this is all coming to a close. I don’t know why the Lord wanted me in Tucson for the last 6 months. I don’t know why, when faced with the choice of Tucson or Kansas, that I felt like God wanted me to stay. But now I can tell you, th...

The last six months have been about the space between the “no longer” and the “not yet” for me. Have I honored that space? Not hardly. I screwed a lot of things up. Perhaps I handled it as best as I could have expected to handle it, without ignoring what I was going through completely. I could have compartmentalized it, moved on without grieving and just pulled myself up by my boot straps and plowed forward. But I didn’t. I think I fell somewhere in between honoring it and ignoring it. I was very aware of the place, and I tried on some level to grieve. The hard part for me was that life still had to go on, and things still happened around me. And I was not in any kind of emotional place to deal with them well. I sought counseling from a few places and people. I tried to be aware of my emotions and my pain without trying to give them more attention then they needed. The last thing I wanted was to become a martyr. The counseling helped… but time ultimately was the most effec...