(This post inspired by Christina Elisha, with much gratitude for asking the tough questions and wrestling with the answers.) This week (this month? this year?) has been rough. The heaviness is in the air, even if, like me, you don’t own a TV and refuse to watch the news. The news still reaches you–violence everywhere. …
March is a weird month for me every year and I always forget that until I am midway through March and wondering what the hell is going on. It’s like getting little whiffs of something that you can’t quite put your finger on. Yesterday, with the month nearly over, it occurred to me why I …
The Liturgy during Lent in the Maronite tradition destroys and rebuilds me every week it seems. It begins with the Wedding at Cana and Jesus’ first public miracle. The reality of the situation was that they were out of wine. The truth, however, was greater than that situation. Jesus was going to show that he …
“It is the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.” Dostoevsky, The Brother’s Karamozov The West calls it divinization. The East calls it theosis. It is the journey, goal, and purpose of the Christian life lived out in this world, getting us fit for the next. “For the …
Three years ago I wrote this, exhausted by the life I was trying to hold together. I was crumbling under the weight of the expectations I put on myself, that the world was only too happy to reinforce. I was one big paper cut and the world was a lemon. However, one night in my …
You know that Kanye song, All of the Lights? “Cop lights, flash lights, spot lights, Strobe lights, street lights, (All of the lights, all of the lights)” How about the check engine light? Mine has been lit up for six months. It’s a faulty O2 sensor and not essential to my commute. Nevertheless, I just …
I think about boundaries a lot. I talk about boundaries fairly often. I wouldn’t say I am obsessed with boundaries, but some people have accused me of being so. Maybe because I didn’t discover this concept until so late in life that it has taken a decade to get the riff-raff out of my yard …
It has been a really interesting few months. God has led me through grief, through facing some things in my past and in myself and in the carefully constructed (false) narrative I had built to protect both. I found myself standing in difficult truths—some that were beautiful and some that were painful, but all were …
When I said, “My foot is slipping,” your unfailing love, Lord, supported me.When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought me joy. (Psalm 94:18-19) You’ve heard the saying attributed to so many people, I don’t actually know who said it first, to be kind because everyone you meet is fighting an uphill battle. Oh, it shows up on Instagram …
reconciling things 