I’m doing all the right things. Christmas music is playing and Michael Bublé & Pentatonix are serenading the season into existence. Christmas cookies have been made and shared. The work holiday party has been attended. Warm lights line the house and a distinct smell of peppermint and pine bloom in the air.
But it’s just not Christmas.
Read MoreI earned my degree in International Studies and, after graduation, went on to work with an organization in San Diego that combats sex trafficking locally. This organization also has a long-term safe house in San Diego, and provides a holistic approach to healing for survivors of sex trafficking.
It was my dream job, and yet somehow I felt like I wasn’t making a difference. I felt discouraged at times; I wanted to do more. It was easy to feel uninspired about emails and forget the bigger picture. I felt like because I wasn't travelling and having these mountain-top experiences anymore that my work wasn't significant. It was the first time in a while that I was stationary and I had never had a "desk job" before. I started believing the lie that I could only glorify God by going on these grand adventures to far away places and communing with those who are hurting.
Read MoreEveryone hopes for something. Maybe your hope is to make it through the week, or to get a promotion, or to get married and have children, or to see those children be successful in life. However, hopes like these are incredibly fleeting. Eventually, the things we place our hope in will let us down and we will be greeted once again by dismay.
This is when God enters the picture.
Read MoreMy husband and I had been married for three years. I remember the conversation leading up to deciding we wanted to have a baby. He was finishing up his second to last semester of grad school and we felt like we were in a good place to bring a little babe into the world. To be honest the first time we got pregnant it didn’t take long. We were as shocked as we were prideful that it didn’t take long. I remember seeing the two lines and just thinking how easy it was. And then a few weeks later there was blood. It was almost like an ice cold reminder that life was way harder than I thought. But my optimism got the best of me and month after month I would remind myself that plenty of women have miscarriages and that we would get pregnant again quickly.
Flash forward one and half years later (yes. you read that right) A very long eighteen months of trying to get pregnant again. Each month anticipating and wondering if it would be the day! The month passed where I should have delivered our first. It felt like a funeral every single day for 31 days straight. And finally eighteen months later, we saw the two lines once again.
Read MoreFathers die. But this death felt so unjust. He was only 65. He was in so much pain that week. Where was the mercy? How is this fair? It’s not fair. He was a good man. Why did he die like that? In truth, he had been gone for a long time. He lived with Parkinson’s for fifteen years and my Mom was his faithful caregiver. Even after he couldn’t live at home; she spent four or more hours a day at the nursing home with him.
One month later, after Dad died, I got the call that my Mom was diagnosed with Stage 4 Uterine Cancer.
Read MoreIt was a month before I would be engaged to the man beyond my prayers when I found out I might be infertile.
When you hear that kind of diagnosis you don't hear the word might, you hear how your far-off hopes were intimately strangled right in front of you.
I had to go to the man I love and say, "I know we want to get married, but I might not be able to have kids. You don't have to marry me if this is not the life you want to sign up for."
It was one of the most powerless moments I have ever experienced.
Read MoreI’ll never forget the night he left. He and my brother, who was nine years older than myself, were in a tremendous argument. My brother stormed out slamming the door behind him. My eight year old self raced to the front porch to call after him. Tears raged as I screamed for him not to go. The intensity of the argument led me to believe that my brother would never be back, the thought caused me tremendous panic. I screamed, I pleaded, I begged. He told me to go back in the house. I remained on that porch until he walked out of view, leaving Grand Street and turning right on Pacific Avenue. It was a grand mess and there was going to be no peace. My brother returned that night, my father did not. He walked out on his wife of twenty-three years, his seventeen-year-old son, and his eight-year-old little boy. The older sisters had already escaped the mess.
So the pattern was set, every other summer until the age of seventeen I trekked to a remote mill town in Alaska to hang out in filth and spend hours and days alone as my father worked rotating shifts, slept, and made trips to the bars. In Alaska you can bring your child to a bar, so often we would spend time together there.
Read MoreFor some time now I've dreamed of the most perfect Thanksgiving meal. There are long tables stretching from one side of the roof to the other, every inch of the bench seats filled with people I love most cozying together for warmth. The table glitters with just enough candles to light our faces, catching glimpses of the flowers and the piles of food. There's a song playing in the background, some kind of jazz, some kind of smooth. I can't hear what they're saying, but everyone's smiling. Their hands frame the things they can't quite say with words, or reach for another spoonful of homemade stuffing, or wrap around someone next to them. It's perfect. It's all perfect. In my head.
Read MoreAs someone who feels things deeply, I found myself on the floor of my door overwhelmed by the weight of living in a fallen world. I felt burdened by the brokenness around me and by the ignored hurts in my own life. I felt helpless under the weight of burdens I was carrying. And my friend, in this messy moment, spoke to me about lament. She gave me the book, Prophetic Lament by Soong-Chan Rah and it changed my life. I started to pursue knowledge of empathy and learned how to listen well. I became a student of grief, empathy, and lament. I learned about empathy from Brene Brown. I poured over laments in the Psalms and fell in love with the book of Job.
Years of hiding from my emotions and humanness started to find healing. I learned from my research, my studies, books of the Bible, my classes, the work of Soong-Chan Rah, and life that lament is necessary. Lament is the cornerstone of praise.
Read MoreI never doubted that prayer worked. But I doubted that my prayers did when I started to meet people who expected immediate results. People who put their hands on my wounds and prayed for healing until it came … or until I succumbed to eventually and told them, “No, it doesn’t hurt anymore.”
"You have to believe this will work," said a man at work before he prayed over me. I'd simply said I'd come down with a bothersome little cold when he asked me how I was. The next thing I knew was his hand was on my forehead nearly trembling with the fervency of prayer. He was calling on God in a coffee shop parking lot like he was Elijah calling down fire from God. And after a breathy, drawn out "Amen.", I sneezed. Did God fail? Or did my belief?
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