I will never forget the moment I walked in to find my mother had taken her last breath. I stopped in my tracks on the nursing home’s linoleum floor, asking my father, who was right behind me, “Is she dead?” Slowly, I backed away, up against the wall across from her bed, as I stared…
My mother forgot my seventeenth birthday. My junior prom had been the evening before, and I slept over at a friend’s house. When I walked through the front door with my overnight bag that Sunday morning, I fully expected a “Happy Birthday” greeting from my family, yet I received none. Exhausted from the late-night shenanigans…
Just a few months ago, my dear friend passed away after a relatively short illness. It has depleted my heart in ways I didn’t expect. I’ve felt loss before, but this ache is different, and although I hold the hands of others through pain, I didn’t expect to respond the way I have. The layers…
I’m a worship leader by trade, and for the past year or so, music has been hard for me. I know this probably seems strange coming from someone whose career is fully entrenched in music, but at some point, it simply stopped bringing me joy and started to feel like work. This medium from which…
When I look back at my thirty-three years of life, at first glance it seems as though everything I’ve ever wanted has been granted to me: my marriage, my children, my home, my career, and even my friendships. Yet none of these deepest desires of my heart came without a period of waiting and struggle…
I stood, clutching the kitchen telephone as if the intensity of my grip would bring clarity to the words coming from the voice on the other end of the line. As soon as I heard the words “Jenny, your brother is dead,” the room started to spin. My body filled with a strange hum, and…