Finding Healing From Creativity
There’s this thing that happens when you make the most of a bad situation for longer than you should: once you leave, all the crappy stuff comes back to you. It doesn’t stay in the past, where you thought you left it. Instead it oozes out of you in the most inconvenient times. It weighs you down, in the very moment you’re ready to move forward. That’s exactly how I felt when I left church ministry. Just when I thought I’d made my escape, all the pain I hadn’t dealt with or even acknowledged, rose to the surface. And, as [...]
Social Distancing: Five Tips To Working From Home
It’s a strange thing to find oneself at home interminably, when so much of your life has been at your job. If you live alone, all of a sudden everything is very quiet and still. If you have kids, it’s the opposite. And, if your home has become your work place, it is all the stranger. To do work in the place you rest feels unnatural, and terribly distracting. Yet this is where most of us have found ourselves this past week: Working from home. As I decided to pursue writing and life coaching a few years ago, this reality [...]
What if We’re Homebound Because of COVID-19?
Hello Friends, this post was written very early in the Covid-19 pandemic. Since then, its implications and our understanding of them, have only grown. All that to say, there is so much this post doesn’t address (the loss of jobs, the stress on hospitals, etc.). But as many of us continue to practice social distancing, the spirit of this piece still stands. Just when we thought the world couldn’t get any crazier, a flu-like virus is shutting down entire countries and giving almost 300 million students an unexpected, scary spring break. Companies are asking employees to work from home, or at minimum, [...]
Five Podcasts To Help Us Step Into Our Creativity
When I first became a youth pastor, I felt like what Shonda Rhimes calls the F.O.D.—the “First Only Different.” I was the only female minister in our department. When I went to our network meetings with other youth pastors in the area, again, I was the only woman. And often, the only single person in the meeting. Don’t get me wrong, I met and worked with some great guys at those meetings. But, spending two hours of each month listening to men talk about balancing fatherhood with ministry—didn’t exactly help twenty-three-year-old me navigate being a woman in the field. I [...]
The Reasons We Don’t Create
Not too long ago, on a podcast, I heard a famous chef lament over what food has become in our country. She said Pinterest and Instagram have shown us how beautiful and fancy it can be. So much so that many of us home cooks wonder why we should even try. There is beauty in feeding others. Then she went on to say that there is so much more to making a meal than cooking a piece of steak perfectly. She talked about the beauty in feeding others. About the love one feels when a hot meal is placed in [...]
Love Learn Lead March 5, 2020
One of my favorite feelings in the world is when I open the oven to take out something I’ve baked—and it looks and smells awesome. Whether it’s a batch of cookies, a loaf of bread, or a pie, there is an incredible feeling of joy and pride that surges through me. Which makes me wonder, What do you create that makes you feel this way? As we live in a culture where everything is graded, measured by “likes,” or easily compared to a million other people’s similar attempts, it can be hard to believe our work is good. To celebrate [...]
