I’ve been thinking a lot about the state of American culture and how it trickles down to interpersonal relationships. We live in a tribal society of us vs them – and “those people” are usually the cause of our woes. The neighbor who does things we don’t like. The driver who doesn’t obey the traffic […]
Faith
2018 Word of the Year – How Did I Do?
Every December I select a word or phrase to be a focus for the upcoming year. In 2018, my word was “intent.” I had in mind an Ecclesiastes 3 year, where everything had a season and needed to stay balanced. I started working for the city in 2015 and, as is typical for me in […]
Christmas Community Idea | Doing Good While Spreading Cheer
I love this idea from our church. Instead of mailing Christmas cards to fellow church members, we were encouraged to drop them off (unpostmarked) at church and donate the money we would have spent on postage to the church’s mission collection. It was so easy! There was a basket for the cards and a locked […]
Being Unreasonable
We’ve been looking for the right church home for some time. It’s a long story – we’re happy to tell it offline if you’re truly interested. Then life happened and bad habits happened and somehow, we just never seemed to get back into church. We finally decided enough was quite enough and we needed to […]
Choices: To Have, To Own, To Embrace
The past four months have been the most incredible rollercoaster for Kelly and I – some things I’ve shared on the blog (new job!), some things are still to be shared (unbelievable!) and some things we’re just treasuring in our hearts for the time being. But the constant thread in all of the upheaval, the […]
To My 25-Year-Old Self
What would you tell your 25-year-old self if you could? I celebrated my 25th birthday in the bush at a Kenya Baptist Women’s meeting and thought my life couldn’t be any more amazing than it was at that moment. And, in truth, it was amazing at the moment. I was using a squatty potty, taking […]
Can the Childless Fit in at Church? [ I’m Just Wondering ]
A moment of honesty. This is a post I haven’t written for years, not because it isn’t part of our lives but precisely because it’s a central truth in our lives. We don’t have children. And that wasn’t our plan. We stopped all birth control 12 years ago. We’ve seen doctors. We’ve gone through surgical […]
Cuba: Saying Goodbye and Final Reflections
All too soon, we were saying goodbye. Up early, onto our tourist bus for a 5:15 am journey to the airport. And miracle of miracles, our flight left close to on-time. We were just 30 minutes late leaving! Goodbye (for now), Cuba! Now here’s the big question: So what? We had a great trip. […]
Cuba: Random Images
I felt guilty about the number of photos I posted yesterday. So this is a bleed-over of photos I wanted to include but didn’t. Crumbling buildings…this is a common site everywhere in the city country. Old cars. Everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Street signs are located at ground level. Ok – you’ll never guess what this […]
Cuba: Day Six
Warning: This post has a ton of photos. More photos than text, actually. If you can handle that, scroll on. Day Six was our free day. After a more leisurely start to the day, Kelly and I headed to Old Havana (La Habana Vieja) to explore the city. Havana was founded in the 1500s by the Spanish. […]