Fear is a powerful word, which evokes strong feelings. Feelings we don’t like to think about, investigate, or consider. We want to hide from fear, and try to escape it in any way we can. But the more we suppress it, the more it controls our lives. Because we have so very little...
My kids got a lot of candy on Easter this year, so much candy that I had to make a rule about how much they could eat each day. My youngest responded to the new rule in typical two-year-old fashion: a fist-pounding screaming tantrum on the floor. I calmly responded that if he stopped his...
A good friend recently reminded me that God can grab our attention when we least expect it. That very next morning, as I was journaling during my devotion time, my focus was pulled to the scripture verse at the bottom of my journal, “In God, whose word I praise—in God I trust...
For the past few years, I’ve had a complicated relationship with Easter. In early April 2014, I lost one of my best friends from college in a scuba diving accident. A few weeks later, I missed church on Easter because I was on a plane for a family trip. Well, I don’t really...
I love learning. I like increasing my knowledge. Not in a Jeopardy random-facts way, but gathering information and knowledge that I can use to become an authority on any given subject. One of the issues I have from childhood is feeling discarded and unimportant. That wound frequently...
I remember when I was a student, breaks were everything. I remember giving myself countdowns and using other various coping strategies to make it through the semesters of hard work. I’d chant things like, “Three more tests until Thanksgiving break.” I’d feel so...
Copyright: Benji Tittle, K1 Photography I began my 20s in a church with “cult-like” aspects, such as extensive pastoral control over members’ lives and relationships. There were events almost every night, insulating us from the outside world. Performance...
I look nothing like my grandma Ruth Geneva. She was a redheaded, fair skinned, white woman, and I am Chinese, with black hair and brown eyes. I am not her biological granddaughter, but she loved me like I was. She was at the hospital with my mom when I was born, and she was the first to...
We live by taking other living beings from the earth, doing some kitchen magic to them, then — with some dental violence — we swallow the bits, and magically they become part of us. This is God’s odd design for powering our bodies. Without participating in this phagic...
“Mama and Dada will get you a goldfish if you poo poo in the toilet.” “If you just sit on the toilet, Mommy will give you two M & M’s!” Ah, bribery. Every parent of a toddler has been there, and I admit that the words above came out of my mouth...