Finding Fresh Air and New Life at the Lord’s Table

Growing up in the church, the Lord's Supper has always been a part of my life. The tradition I grew up in dictated that participation in the Lord's Supper (also referred to as Communion or Eucharist) began after a public profession of faith, and for me that was at the age of 18. In the...

Resting…and trusting.

It's September 3 and here in Lethbridge where I live, most students have been in school for a day or two now. Calendars are quickly filling up with meetings and events, everything returning to full swing after a break over the summer. Things are looking different this year, due to COVID-19, but things starting up...

Grace in the Middle

I saw this as I scrolled through Facebook the other day and it made me giggle a little bit. Isn't that the truth? Some days it feels like all you hear about, read about, or maybe even talk about, is masks. Who would have ever thought even six months ago that this would be a...

Finishing Well

These last months of COVID seemed to have all blurred together, with the entire globe kind of plodding along together, trying to figure out where the finish line is. Assuming, of course, there is a finish line? That's part of what's so frustrating with all of this, the fact that no one knows when this...

Hard Questions

I am one of those blessed people who not only grew up with four loving grandparents, I had the added benefit of living on the same yard as two of them. My mom's parents, Pake & Beppe, lived mere yards away, which meant that many hours of my childhood were spent at their house. I...

The Whole World?

Growing up in the church means there is a whole portion of my brain filled with Sunday School flannel graph memories, Psalty, and the actions to all sorts of songs. Side note: when I was growing up in church, we did not raise our hands, we did not clap - but yet actions to kids'...

Noise

I am old enough to remember life without social media - well, let's be realistic. I'm old enough to remember life without the internet. I remember the first time I looked up (because Googling was not yet a verb) something on the internet - I was told I could look up anything, so I searched...

Empty Shelf

For the first time in many months, the top shelf of my desk is empty of books. This is where I kept all of the textbooks for the classes I was taking. At one point in time, the entire shelf was full, with stacks that went up to the window. But today, it's empty. Last...

Waymaker

Tonight was special. Tonight we gathered together at my parents' house to have supper just as the original group - just us seven kids and Mom and Dad. We love to get together as our big noisy group of 35+ people and look forward to restrictions being lifted so we can do that again. Tonight...

All things are not as they appear…

It's been awhile since I've posted here - almost 2 1/2 years to be exact - but I find myself with a desire, maybe even a need, to start writing again, to get my thoughts down. So get a journal, right? Well, as a dear friend likes to remind me, I'm an Enneagram 3, which...