Something Beautiful

I remember the first time I was asked to help serve communion at church. It felt very sacred and holy to me. As I held out a glass of grape juice and prayed over those who came and dipped their bread in the cup, I was overwhelmed by the act. I realized that this is what our lives are supposed to be like. We are called to hold out the body and blood of Jesus to the world , to show the world what His Kingdom is like. A couple of weeks ago, my pastor husband was serving communion at church, and when one of our congregants came up to receive , h e asked if he could have a big piece of bread because he was hungry. M y husband tore off a big chunk of bread and gave it to him. I chuckled when he told me this story later, but it also made me pause. It made me wonder if sometimes we don't take enough bread . I wonder if maybe we should all be asking for big pieces of bread . Recently, a four year old in our community was killed in a tragic accident. My soul ached. A woman I know ...

My husband is not the answer to my prayers. Yes, you read that correctly. While I prayed for years and years for my husband, he is in fact not the answer to my prayers.   I thought for many years that prayer was my only opportunity to influence my marital status . I thought that just maybe if I prayed hard enough and pursued God long enough that I would wear Him down . He would give me what I wanted . He would finally hear me. I just had to be persistent enough. I just had to wait long enough. I just had to be devoted enough . The problem with all of that is it treats prayer rather like a vending machine. If I finally g e t the right amount of change, I w ill get what I want. If I finally round up enough quarters, I c an get that delicious Dr. Pepper or bag of Doritos .* Sadly, this is often what I see happen not just in my life, but in the church as well. We just h ave to pray harder and longer, and God will heal the person with can cer. We just have to have anot...

I have never spent much time thinking about Holy Saturday. It is the ordinary day sandwiched between the cross of Good Friday and the empty tomb of Easter Sunday. Here it sits: ordinary, overlooked Saturday. There are no special church services. There are no celebrations. It is just here - the space in between. The space where Jesus was in the grave.  I realized this morning that this ordinary, sandwiched Saturday has a very important lesson to teach. It teaches us about waiting. This space on Saturday is the waiting space. It is the space for grief. I have a confession: I am a bad mourner. I crack jokes to break up tears, jokes that usually aren't funny and just lead to awkwardness. I try to move past grief. I don't want to be sad because the world tells me that sadness is wrong. If I'm not happy all the time then something is wrong with me. And let's face it, who really wants to be sad? Who wants to grieve? Who wants to lament?  A couple of years ago now, I was ...

Two years ago, March 9th was a Sunday. It was a beautiful, sunny morning sandwiched between two Sundays that were snowy and cold. I was ten days away from moving to Kansas, and I was planning to go home after church and eat leftover french onion soup by myself.  This particular Sunday was an "After Bite" Sunday at my church. This meant that they would pick several restaurants and everyone would go out to eat together. It was a way to engage in intentional community with the body of Christ. I want you to know that I believe in gathering around a table with people. Sitting down to eat a meal with friends, family, and strangers - who are just friends waiting to be made - is one of my favorite expressions of being the body of Christ.  When Jesus wanted to connect with people He sat down and ate a meal with them. On the night He was betrayed, He told His disciples that He had been eagerly longing to share this meal with them. Something special and beautiful happens when peop...

I try not to write about politics. More than almost anything else, politics seem to drive people apart and cause division and hurt. It doesn't have to be this way as this article explains , but that is the way it has become throughout my lifetime. And the older I get, the more it makes my heart ache.  The current election, in particular, drains my soul. My soul longs for people to live together in harmony and love (yes, I realize this sounds a little hippie-ish, please bear with me). What has been tearing my heart up over the last few months is the basic lack of respect for other people. As I have grown close to the Lord over the course of my life, I have come to know His heart for me: I am His beloved daughter.  This has been a beautiful revelation simply because of the larger revelation that it brought: every single person (regardless of whether they acknowledge God or not) is a beloved son or daughter of God. Every single person - past, present, and future - is ...

When people find out I have lost over 50 pounds, the initial exclamation is that there's no way I could have been that heavy . T he next question is always: "How did you do it?"  I have been hesitant to write a post about this because I don't think that there is a formula for how to lose weight , and I don't want my journey to become a formula. However, as I was talking to my sister-in-law the other evening, I realized that I do have something to say on the subject that I think needs to be heard.  My journey, while it was initially about losing weight, became so much more. As a sophomore in college, I got on a scale and I forgot what the third number was because the first two were 1-7. I think it was either a 3 or a 5. I determined that I had to lose weight. I tried a low carb - high protein diet. After about a month, I actually gained weight instead of losing it and gav e up . The last word I would ever u se to de scribe my body was beautiful. I was ...