It’s week three of my sabbatical, and after lots of sleep, Hulu, and time in the woods, I’m finally feeling ready to share some reflections. So, here are three brief gleanings from these first three weeks. You don’t know how fast you’ve been moving until you stop.  In the 12 months preceding sabbatical, I did the…

Saturday night in a pastor’s house, especially when that pastor is also a mama, is guaranteed to be the worst night of sleep for said person of God. The last minute details of the sermon keep me awake sometimes, but more often it is the children who seem to need me most exactly when I…

A Sermon on John 19:1-16 On Wednesday morning, some 200 students gathered in the auditorium of West High School as part of a nationwide walk out to protest gun violence. They spent 17 minutes in silence for the 17 students killed a month ago in Parkland Florida. That same afternoon, about 40 of us sat…

“I don’t work at Pneumat anymore”, Marrett texted, and I let out a heavy breath. It had been coming, I knew, but the reality of him being unemployed for the second time in two years took the wind out of me. Almost two years ago, my husband lost his career to an unfair decision I’m…

A sermon on John 11 Already this week, I’ve preached about the confluence of Love and Death in the story of our faith, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that those two themes reassert themselves in our gospel reading this morning. Especially not surprising, since today’s reading follows the one I preached Wednesday in John’s…

Ash Wednesday 2018 John 10: 1-18 It’s a funny confluence of dates this year, with Ash Wednesday on Valentine’s Day and Easter on April Fool’s. And while we might not like the idea of celebrating our love for each other and remembering our mortality all on the same day, as Christians we have to admit…

tir-age tahy-rehyj | noun the act of being so tired that you’re angry at whoever is sleeping closest to you, usually your spouse, and you wake them up by yelling at them the sound a baby makes when getting three teeth at the same time, while also trying to drag/crawl across the room to a…

In my first semester of college, when I still believed my music major would lead to a singing career, I took music theory.  The professor was a jolly imp who couldn’t have been taller than five feet and had more musical talent in his ivory-tinkling pinky than my entire class combined. His favorite part of…

“I can’t pray right now,” I told my spiritual director a few years ago. I had words for lots of things, like anger and sorrow, custody battling and trash talking. But when it came to prayer, I had no words. Maybe it was because I was protesting the God who I thought had treated me…

January 25, 2012: My first husband moves out, beginning the process of getting divorced. January 25, 2017: My second husband and I welcome a baby girl into our blended family. It cannot be a coincidence, these events book-ending the most difficult and life-giving five years of my life. I could not have imagined today from…