How Faith Changes the Way We Hold Control
Surrender is one of those words that has been used to do a lot of harm. I’d like to take it back. It has been said to women in dangerous…
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God Is Not Asking You to Carry the World
I want to be careful in this one, because I’m about to disagree with some sermons. There’s a version of Christian womanhood floating around that treats exhaustion as evidence of…
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Trusting God With What You’re Becoming
Most of us can eventually get to a place of trusting God with circumstances. Hard, but we know the language for it. The job, the diagnosis, the kid, the money….
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Fall Is Not the End, It’s the Preparation
Everything a woods needs for next spring is already on the ground right now. The acorns are down. The maple seeds spun off in October. The leaf litter that’s going…
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God’s Grace in the In-Between Seasons
We have ceremonies for the beginnings and the endings. Weddings, funerals, graduations, retirement parties, baby showers. Somebody brings a cake. Nobody throws anything for the middle. And the middle is…
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God Does Not Rush the Seasons
Drive the Western Kentucky Parkway in the middle of September and look at the hills. Some trees are still fully green. Some are at peak, the kind of orange that…
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The Season That Teaches Us to Trust the Process
Trust the process. I’ve heard that sentence used to dismiss more real pain than almost any other four words in my line of work, and I’ve also watched it be…
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God’s Work Often Happens in the Unseen
A hardwood puts a serious amount of its life underground. Root systems that spread wider than the canopy, working down through clay and rock, most of it happening in the…
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God Is Present in Seasons of Shedding
There’s a stretch of road out past my house where the trees meet overhead all summer. Green tunnel, all of it. Then, when fall comes, it’s a skeleton. You can…
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Fall Reminds Us That Change Can Be Beautiful
Here is a piece of grade school science that changed how I see the fall coming. Leaves do not turn colors. Not really. The yellows and the oranges were in…
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When the World Slows Down, So Can You
Here is a contradiction nobody names out loud, and once you see it you cannot unsee it. The natural world spends September downshifting. Days shorten, sap withdraws, animals slow down…
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The Quiet Beauty of Letting Go
I put the garden up every September, and every year there is a strange minute in the middle of it. I stand there with the tomato cages in my arms,…
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Fall Is Not the Beginning of the End
The first cool morning always catches me off guard. You step out for the paper or to start the car. You notice that the air has changed overnight, and you…
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When Things Fall Away: The Sacred Power of the Fall Season
There is a week in western Kentucky, usually somewhere in the middle of September, when you can feel the whole county exhale. The air changes before the calendar does. The…
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Faith, Safety, and the Nervous System
Refuge. Fortress. Strong tower. Hiding place. Shelter under His wings. A very present help in trouble. Line those words up and notice what they have in common. When the writers…
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Religious Trauma: When Faith Got Used as a Weapon
“I can’t open my Bible without my chest getting tight.” The woman who said that to me loved God. That was the part tearing her up. She was not an…
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God Is Near the Broken, Not Disappointed in Them
“I thought I was a bad Christian because I still flinch.” A woman said that in my office years into her healing, and she said it the way people confess…
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Forgiving Someone You Still Have to See
Most forgiveness advice has a quiet assumption baked into it, and once you spot it, you can’t unsee it. It assumes you can leave. Block the number, move the membership,…
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When the Person Who Hurt You Never Says Sorry
Somebody reading this has an empty chair at the table. The conversation you were owed, the one where they finally look you in the eye and name what they did,…
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Forgiveness That Protects You
We’ve reached the last stretch of this series, and I want to open it with a picture from every Southern porch I’ve ever loved. The screen door. A screen door…