A Blueprint for Prayer
September 6, 2011
Motherhood does strange things to the brain. Having a baby turns the mind to mush right at the beginning, as many of you can attest, but I think that's because a mother's brain radically alters after her first child is born. It divides, segments, and begins to operate not for one person's day-to-day existence, but two. And that takes some getting used to. For the first few years, we forget the diapers at mom's...

Living Beyond Yourself: Is It Possible?
August 30, 2011
If there's one major downfall of social media, it's that it has turned too many of us into relentless navel gazers. We have become a society of oversharers, whether on Pinterest or Posterous, Foursquare or Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr...  Never before have we been so encouraged to turn our focus inward, to offer up every last detail of our daily lives to anyone who'll listen... And as offenders go, I'm right up there...

Last Call
August 26, 2011
At this point, just a few days before I launch the first online Bible Study group I've ever attempted, I have to admit that the nerves are setting in. Who do you think you are, hosting a Bible Study? a mean little voice says inside my head. You're no Sophie. You're no Angie. You're known for your mistakes, not for your faithfulness. You're going to alienate your non-Christian readers over this. You're going to make...

Take a Leap of Faith with Me
August 17, 2011
When I asked a few weeks ago if anyone was interested in doing an online Beth Moore Bible study with me, I was hoping seven or eight of you might respond. Well, I was surprised and delighted to find that many of you are interested in participating, which is AWESOME because I think it will make a huge difference in your lives and I'm so excited to help make that possible. This post will give you all the details you need...

God is Good, and My Kids Need to Know It
August 9, 2011
I grew up in a Baptist church in a small North Georgia town. I grew up believing in a God who was out to get me. The God I learned about at church watched over me like a hawk, ready to put a black mark beside my name if I argued with my brother or said a bad word or disobeyed my parents. The God I learned about at church was more than willing to send me to hell once too many of those black marks accumulated, where...

This is Who I Am
February 7, 2011
I don't write very often about being a Christian. The reason I don't write about it is that for a number of you, reading that I'm a Christian doesn't give you a mental image of a belief system- it gives you an image of a lifestyle, one that many of you either idolize or detest, based largely on your experiences with other Christians. And for better or worse, I don't often feel like I fit within the confines of that...

Turning Point
May 19, 2010
If you were to live here in Bellevue, you'd find that everyone you run into has an amazing story to tell right now. 1000-year floods will do that to you. In supermarkets, mothers stand across parked buggies and recount tales of literally swimming out of their homes. Outside churches, families listen in amazement to stories of men and women who went above and beyond to rescue perfect strangers and save lives. In book...

Unfrozen
April 19, 2010
When I was a teenager, I used to spend a week each summer working on John's Island off of the South Carolina coast. The trip felt like journeying into another world, where time had stood still. Many of the families on the island had been there for generations, working on tomato farms and maintaining the Gullah traditions. Some of the older ones still spoke Gullah, and nearly every islander we encountered had a lilting...

How Do I Address My Child’s Greatest Fear When It’s Mine, Too?
March 11, 2010
A NOTE ABOUT THIS POST: As I was preparing to write this post last week, I wondered to myself what Julie tells her girls when they ask about death. (Julie is a mother I respect and adore. She is also an atheist.) Then I thought of an amazing conversation I had recently at our Cheeseburgher Party in Houston with Devra, Catherine and Loralee. Somehow, our discussion turned to religious beliefs and we marveled that the four...

Because It’s Okay to Ask Why
April 1, 2009
You can't read blogs for long without finding yourself impacted by another blogger's suffering. A few years ago, Leanne gave lymphoma a beatdown and I read along with baited breath. Last summer, Nie Nie was in a plane crash and now is making a miraculous recovery. I have followed her story so closely over the last six months that I feel like I know Nie Nie and her entire family. And now, there's Stellan. Who doesn't...