“Thank you for being here. It means so much to me.” Her words pulsed with an unspoken yearning to believe I was there on purpose, just for her. I was dumbfounded. I was serving on a Kairos weekend at the women’s state prison, and until five minutes ago, we didn’t know each other. Or rather,…
The sense of loss had hung over me like a cloud for months. It started on a beautiful October Saturday morning at my nephew’s football game. That’s quite an unlikely place to start feeling a sense of despair, I know, but grief is weird like that. I stood on the sideline of my junior high…
It’s been weeks since Easter. As everyone else seems to be moving on from the empty tomb, I can’t stop thinking about his resurrection. I think about the disciples after his crucifixion. Three days to process the inconceivable loss of their leader, teacher, mentor, friend, brother. Did they try to comfort themselves with the same…
At the age of twenty-seven, I stood in a church on Mother’s Day and wept. I’d been diagnosed with a condition that made it difficult to bear children, and being a mother had been the dream of my life. Even in elementary school, my career goals always revolved around the very young. I’ve had a…
There’s a concept in mathematics known as fractals. Without getting too far into the weeds with a definition, fractals are self-repeating patterns. Imagine a picture of hundreds of triangles within triangles. Zoom in one aspect of the triangle, and you find the same pattern as the larger picture; the repeating pattern allows you to zoom…
The hospital room where my twenty-six-year-old daughter lay against snowy sheets grew quiet as a tomb. Her husband sat next to her. He leaned his back against the wall, holding her hand, which was covered with bandages. Tubes pulled at her pale skin. His thumb caressed her palm back and forth, back and forth. Each…