The Project of Me

Comfort with being replaceable is confidence in your self-worth. I know that sounds backwards, so let me explain... And let me clarify that to be too comfortable with being replaced might be a sign of a low view of self. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. I was helping out with my church's VBS that we were able to hold in person despite everything happening with COVID-19. I had been placed in charge of the missions station which meant I’d done work ahead of time to prepare presentations and crafts for each night. The first night with the kids went pretty well. But afterwards, I was up most of the night with an upset stomach. I was pretty certain it wasn't coronavirus related since it was my only symptom and that symptom was at the bottom of the symptom list, but still… I knew I needed to make a decision on whether I’d be there that night or stay home soon so the director could fill my spot. My conscience began to nag me. I knew the smart and safe thing...

For the past four years now, I've celebrated Mother's Day as a "Dog-Mom." But in my perfectly laid out five year plan for my life, I thought I'd have some human babies by now. In the past couple years, Mother's Day has brought up some strange feelings for me. I still sometimes grieve the alternate direction my life has taken, the loss of my plans along with it, and, silly as it may be, I feel the pressure of the biological clock ticking. At the same time, I am also so relieved that I don't have little ones to care for right now and I can just focus on taking care of myself. I don't know when or if the right time for me to be a mother to human babies will come. But it has had me thinking about the third step in recovery. "We made a decision to turn our lives and our wills over to the care of God." Celebrate Recovery partners this with a Biblical principle based on the beatitude, "Happy are the meek." They phrase this thirst...

You’ve likely heard of FOMO- “fear of missing out.” But FOBN- “fear of bad news,” is FOMO’s much less talked about second cousin. Do you suffer from FOBN? Take a minute to reflect on your actions and reactions over the past month- which has been filled with plenty of bad news. How have you handled everything? Maybe you weren’t one of those people buying toilet paper in bulk… but has the thought of your loved ones getting sick consumed you? Are you panicking over the possibility of losing your job? Are you worried about finances? Are you stressed out over the thought of social distancing for another month or your kids not going back to school? Have you been afraid to give or stopped giving entirely to your local church or charity because you’re afraid of what the future holds? In general, do you just feel the doom and gloom setting in? Most of these reactions are what we call “normal” right now because if we’re honest, we’ve accepted the fear of bad news as a normal part of soci...

I think it’s a bit of a shame that we don’t do more to acknowledge the first full day after Jesus’ death, the first Saturday, that first period of waiting. We solemnly acknowledge Friday and the gruesome crucifixion that took place but we celebrate in light of the coming hope that we know Easter Sunday brings. But the first Christians on Easter Sunday did not know what Sunday held for them. Many of them had risked their lives to follow a radical man that was now dead. So for them, Saturday was not just a day in between. It was a full day of grief over the events of the day before, confusion over what God was doing, and fear over what the future held for them. That sounds just a little like how many of us may be spending our days right now. I think we can learn a lesson from those first believers on what to do in times of waiting: Remember God’s promises and trust God’s process. In the waiting, the disciples forgot Jesus’ promises, or prophecies. Though Jesus prophesied that h...

As I sit in quarantine at home, I feel at peace- not because the world is at peace or even because my personal world is at peace- but because the past year has taught me how to be okay with feeling out of control. A year ago today, long before anyone suspected the world would turn upside down, my world turned upside down. Around midnight on April 7, 2019, my husband overdosed on the bathroom floor of my hospital room and was medically dead for about seven minutes. Had we not already been in a hospital, he wouldn’t be alive today. Prior to that night, I’d been in denial, believing his addiction wasn’t that bad and he just needed a little help. The events of that night made me realize how out of control things really were. That night led to a series of events that put me in a position where I couldn’t even pretend to be in control anymore. Losing the illusion of control helped me see that I never had any in the first place. But God was and is and forever will be in control. I do...

Last September, I found myself in a waiting room for a dentist that I'd never heard of, in an office I had formerly known nothing about, waiting for a lunch break appointment that I’d been penciled in for the night before. I was in desperate need of a root canal and had been for probably a couple months by then but I didn’t have the insurance to cover it. The night before I was in so much pain I was in tears. My mom reached out to a dentist she knew of through work and he got me in right away. As I sat in his waiting room listening to other patients schedule their appointments weeks in advance for dentists they had already met, I couldn’t help but be struck by the oddity of my situation. The other thing that was blatantly obvious to me was that, as awkward as it was to get help from a stranger, this was God’s way taking care of me . The dentist billed my insurance and did the emergency work at no cost to me and then walked me down the hall to the School of Dental Medicine so they...