The author reflects on a high school experience where she stood up for herself, then later forgot her strength. Recently, she realized she was placing herself at the mercy of various struggles. Remembering God’s mercy and love, she finds confidence and freedom, embracing her identity as a daughter of God. The passage from Mark exemplifies the power of seeking mercy from Jesus. … More Have Mercy on Me
The following post is the final part of a series describing my story of deconstructing my Christian faith and reconstructing it within orthodoxy rather than choosing to deconvert. Make sure to read up on Part 1 and Part 2 before moving on! Where Else Would I Go? There’s a song by John Mark Pantana that goes like this: … More Deconstruction: your faith has saved you, Part 3
The following post is part of a series describing my story of deconstructing my Christian faith and reconstructing it within orthodoxy rather than choosing to deconvert. Make sure to read up on Part 1 before moving on! In January 2019, as I was sitting in the quiet and writing in my journal, an image came … More Deconstruction: self-exposure, Part 2
I know the love of God the most when it rains. As a little girl in the Pacific Northwest, before I knew about bad things beyond a scraped knee, it rained. It was a consistent rhythm, and I was a sponge for it as the nostalgic walls of childhood innocence were building up deep in … More The Love of God Lives in the Dry Places, too
March woke me up with her atmospheric rivers, and unrealized crises, and pea-sized hail, and burdened sleep, and gentle rain, and school shootings, and warming sunbeams amidst brisk, prolonged Winter air and a cosmic war, and flooded fields and homes and roads and lives, and bright evening walks to look at the painful gift she … More A Poem: March in my bones
My deepest longing and most tender pain point is the desire to be seen. I mean, seen. I want the right people to notice when I’m wearing a mask and that I’m leaking out, even when I don’t realize it myself. I know this longing very well, and yet I still hide myself away behind … More To See & Be Seen
Over the years, “I love you” has become a platitude I haven’t wanted anymore; a statement so often full of feelings of affection and good intentions and empty of embodiment — and so the one to whom these words are given too often ends up crumbling because the support that should have embodied love was … More To My Fellow Christians: reclaiming the sanctity of Love
I am guilty of keeping a record of wrongs. Each offense wrapped around my heart — the words like chains, gripping me, cutting deeper wounds, festering, bleeding, choking out any longing to love and remain. No strength of mine can break these chains away — I need a different set of hands, Ones with nail … More A Poem: Forgiveness
I can’t count how many times I’ve been in my own home and said to myself, “I just want to go home.” But there was nowhere to go. Left with a kind of existential angst and unmet longing, in moments like these I’m usually reminded that what I’m really longing for is completeness and for … More An Exile and a Stranger
Grace is the free gift of God’s enablement. – Mildred Bangs Wynkoop I am a living thing, with a body, a soul, and a mind — living, even with a body broken, sometimes unfamiliar; living, even with a soul sometimes unexplainably sick; living, even with a mind finite, failing me into frustration. I am a … More A Poem: Living