Instead of writing something myself this week, I wanted to share-with her permission–a post from my dear friend Adria Murphy. When I read this, it spoke words of truth and comfort to that fearful part of my heart that is always unable to understand or accept that God loves me unconditionally, forever. Hopefully, this will bring encouragement to you, wherever you stand in relation to God’s love. –Carolyn I have boundary issues. Every time I...
I celebrated my 26th birthday this last Saturday. And, though I am a little freaked out by the fact that I am now officially closer to 30 than to 20, on the whole I can only feel a deep sense of thankfulness: I am thankful to be 26, to have lived another year in the beautiful sunshine of California, to be constantly learning and (hopefully) growing, to deepen relationships with my friends and family, to...
It can all come to feel so mundane. Established. Foreseeable. So taken for granted. It’s a given. The daily commute. The workday. The repetition. All the hours, and things that we will do in them and see in them mapped out. We come to feel a certain predictability in our routines. We know what we’ll be doing at 9 o’clock on Monday morning, we know what we’ll see on our drive to work, we know...
He approaches us at the Chevron station on the corner of Rosecrans and Sepulveda, where, on a clear day, you can see the skyscrapers of downtown L.A. cupped in the palm of the San Gabriel mountains, and overhead the planes queued up in the vast expanse of blue sky, waiting to land at LAX. Vinny, one of the kids I take care of, and I are having fun using the squeegee to clean the windows...
When I took my job as a nanny/housekeeper, I had no idea how much repetition it would involve. My days revolve around the never-finished tasks of preparing food, making beds, washing dishes, putting away clothes, assisting with homework, sweeping floors, etc. At first I resented the sisyphean nature of housework–it seemed a cruel waste of time that yielded no truly satisfying and conclusive results. Ask any homemaker and they could tell you that the dishes...
She approaches the table slowly, hands laden with plates of food, and I recognize her immediately: Marina from Moldova. She had been our waitress on our last visit, had spoken to us in Russian, and we had prayed for her health. That was at least six months ago, and now, though she isn’t our waitress, she is serving us our food. I want to know how she’s doing, but am not sure if she’ll even...
I’m not sure what I thought I would find when I stepped inside the gymnasium the last Saturday night in March. I know that I was hoping to find my sister and enjoy the show–but I considered neither of those very likely given the crowd of people crammed inside the gym and the fact that I hadn’t been to a concert in over five years. As far as concerts go, I had thought that they...
When I was a kid, tons of things scared me–not the least of which was taking Communion. I can remember walking into church and being filled with dread when I saw the Communion trays stacked at the front of sanctuary. I would spend the entire service wracking my brain trying to remember and confess everything that I had ever done wrong, begging God to bring to mind anything I might have forgotten. It was a...
This story begins at the bottom of a trashcan–which, I admit, is not a very promising start. But it’s the story of how I come to be writing this post at all. It was a Sunday night in July 2011, 2 weeks after the miscarriage. My sisters had been visiting us for the past eleven days–providing a welcome source of comfort and distraction from the pain of our loss. But their trip was coming to...
It’s Friday, 11:20 a.m. and I am so frustrated with my little charge, Giuliana. I just picked her up from school and we are driving back to the house when she asks me what we’re going to do when we get home. I tell her that she can play while I finish up a few chores. “Can I watch TV?” she inquires immediately, and I say no. Because too much TV isn’t good for her....
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