To the Church: It’s Our Time, and the Time Is Now
For many years, our family has attended a small country church that sits about a mile from our rural Iowa home. Nestled among farmfields, our church has its own cemetery across the road. Whenever I...
View ArticleThe Strange and Unexpected Gift of Waiting
This is the waiting room. Welcome. You know this place, don’t you? When we are in the waiting room, we eventually have to make this choice: We can either distance ourselves from God or we can trust Him...
View ArticleWhere Is the “Good” in Good Friday?
I was well into my thirties the first time I cried over the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Throughout my life, I had listened to hundreds of sermons about Christ’s death. I had read about it extensively,...
View ArticleLet Go of What Costs You Your Peace
I was thirty years old, pregnant, with a great job, a wonderful husband, a nice home, and a promising future in my career. And I was miserable. I had no peace. I know. It doesn’t make a lot of sense,...
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You Are Not Falling Behind
One stormy spring day, I found myself on the skinny dirt road that borders the “back 80” field of our farm. It was another rainy day, on top of a series of rainy days, and because of the puddles, my...
View ArticleWeeds Grow in Hard Places — We Can Too
2020 was the year that the young, fictional Alexander might describe as a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad” year. And what do you do for a year like that? Well, if you’re me, you take a lot of...
View ArticleThe Extraordinary Kindness of God and Flowers
A few weeks ago, on a warm July afternoon, our family drove to the lake for a weekend away. I normally want to get to the lake quickly, but on this particular day, I enjoyed every moment of the...
View ArticleShould We Celebrate When Others Suffer?
Our family got some terrific news last week. It was the sort of news that called for hands-in-the-air praise on the town square. But I was so reluctant to share the good news with the people who had...
View ArticleThe Value of the Land in the Graveyard
A Facebook message popped in my inbox the other day, and it was similar to hundreds of messages, emails, and texts that I have received over the years. “I want to write a book, but where do I begin?”...
View ArticleHere’s the One Thing That Will Never Change
I had it all memorized — the way some people memorize favorite songs, Bible verses, or math facts. That’s how I had my town memorized — by heart. I knew which sidewalk bulges could derail a Schwinn...
View ArticleI Want to See Jesus in the Church Like I Saw Him at the Hospital
I have often heard that a church should look more like a hospital, and that’s the out-of-left-field thought I had at a most unusual moment. It popped into my mind when a nurse inserted the IV needle...
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Reassurance When God’s Pace Feels Slow
Confession: Some of the worst moments of my life have happened while I was going too fast. I’m not talking about the speeding tickets — there have been a few — or the time, in my typical rush, I...
View ArticleSurprising Grace for the Hurting: Jesus Was a Teenager
We’ve all prayed a prayer that goes something like this: God, where are You? Can’t You see how much this hurts right now? Why aren’t You doing something about it? I have never prayed that prayer more...
View ArticleSometimes Barely Is Enough
It was an unusually rough week in the middle of a very hard season. You know the kind of week I’m talking about — where it seems like you’re getting hit with one hard thing after another and getting...
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How to Make a Legacy Bible for Someone You Love
I found my daughter sitting at the kitchen table, and tears pooled in my eyes before I said a single word. There were so many things I wanted to say, so many things I still wanted to teach and show...
View ArticleA Lesson from Two Sick Pigs, A Herd of Hogs, and a Divine Farmer Named Jesus
I live on a fifth-generation family farm in Iowa, and it never ceases to amaze me how farm life offers a metaphorical window into the human experience. In particular, I’ve been in awe over how the...
View ArticleThe Energy You Can Bring Into Every Room, for the Rest of Your Life
A burst of unexpected laughter came from the bedroom where Dad was propped up on his hospice bed, while he watched Wheel of Fortune with my sister Juliann. Dad was a huge fan of Wheel of Fortune, which...
View ArticleBut How Are You REALLY Doing Right Now?
A few weeks ago, I got sick with a fever that wouldn’t go away. On one of the worst nights of my sickness, I slipped away to the couch, so that my tossing and turning wouldn’t wake up my husband. I...
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Table of One
I’m in the booth to your left, the one tucked up against the corner of the restaurant. It smells like fries and bacon, and the waitress brings two glasses of water in tall mason jars. I picked this...
View ArticleThe Surprising Gifts Waiting in Your Coldest Winter
A few weeks ago, our part of the world was hit with subzero temperatures – the kind of temps that had my friends posting memes that said things like, “Why do I live where the air hurts my face?” It was...
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