Light in the Margins

“This is the worst day of my life!” My 10-year-old daughter exclaimed before bed one evening. “I wish I could just go back to yesterday and nothing change.”

In March, at a regular check up, our pediatrician suspected that she had scoliosis. We’d been through this before with my oldest daughter and thought we knew this path. A quick x-ray, a brief chat with the specialist, and we’d be good. Just establish a six month maintenance plan...

When I was 13, I had an unusual fainting episode and woke up with a gash under my right eye, just above my cheek, that required 10 stitches. That was also the summer I got braces—an awkward beginning to my teenage years.

We did everything we could to lessen the scar—my mom was so diligent to carefully apply vitamin E oil to my skin every night. But even now, decades later, the scar remains. Most people never notice it.

But I do.

Es...

As I’ve been meditating on this word grace, a thought came to me: why can I extend grace to others—but not to myself?

If I have grace flowing through me, I can overlook rude or insensitive actions of others. I can forgive. I can give the benefit of the doubt. But what about those times that I ought to show that same grace to myself?

On the outside, I might come across as polished, confident, perhaps even put together. But inside? The...

Since my mother passed, not a week has gone by that I haven't wished things could just “go back to normal.” In fact, I have come to appreciate “normal” days more than ever before, though what's normal now is far different than it was a year or two ago. I long to pick up the phone and call her throughout my day. I miss letting my girls FaceTime her whenever they want. Talking to her had a way of making everything right again, for al...

Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices. —2 Corinthians 2:11

There can be no doubt that we have an Enemy who seeks to discourage and destroy us. The Bible tells us not to be ignorant of his devices, and, speaking from experience, I think one of his most cunning devices is the small, unintended thing. Those subtle jabs that were never intended, but can still cut deep.

This unintentional harm sh...

As I was reading Psalm 77 this morning, a word leapt off the page. (This happens a lot—I'm convinced my Bible is full of words waiting on little springs to jump up and grab my attention and arrest my meditation.)

“I complained,” says the Psalmist.

I remembered God, and was troubled: I complained, and my spirit was overwhelmed. Selah.—Psalm 77:3

But wait, I thought, didn't the children of Israel mess up with their complaining? Aren't ...

We recently upgraded our minivan to a 2019 model, and it has this fancy modern feature called “adaptive cruise control.” If you’ve never experienced this, it’s sort of wild. You set the speed you want to cruise at, let’s say 75 mph, but as you drive, the car uses radar to detect vehicles ahead of you. It calculates their speed and distance and adjusts your speed accordingly. It will never go faster than the cruise you set, but if a...

This is the final part in the series, Too Much, Not Enough, but Still Valuable. Go back and read Part 1 or Part 2 if you missed them!

So far, I’ve explored how Peter’s boldness made him seem like “too much” and how Moses doubted his call, claiming he was “not enough”. At the end of Part 2, I mentioned that God did not chide Moses for his doubts and say “you’re right—I picked the wrong guy.” Instead, God responds with a question— “w...

This is Part 2 in the series Too Much, Not Enough, but Still Valuable.

Click here to read Part 1.

In my first post, I discussed the life of Peter and how I love his boldness: not cowering in fear but asking to walk on water; not merely looking in to the empty tomb, but rushing right inside. At times I feel like Peter, bold yet bumbling, passionate but prone to overstep, charging ahead when others would stand still.

And then, there are...

I read my Old and New Testaments concurrently throughout the year and sometimes the pairings fall in interesting ways. Recently, I was in both Exodus 3 and John 20. As I reflected on the lives of Moses and Simon Peter, I found some interesting similarities in both their personalities and failures.

Over the next few posts, I’d like to share my reflections and what I learned—especially when I feel like I’m “too much” or maybe not enou...

When I lost my first set of twins, Rebekah and Rachel, in 2011, a dear friend sent me a sympathy card. In closing she wrote, "Though my words be clumsy tools, I remain your devoted friend."

Those words were anything but clumsy. They were a beautiful sentiment that has stuck with me all these years.

Sometimes words can just feel clumsy, though, can't they?

Especially when someone is hurting or going through a trial.

We want to say some...

My husband was recently promoted at his job, a promotion which I’m incredibly proud of him for achieving, but as I reflected on his success, I was struck by a sobering thought: there are no promotions in motherhood. No annual evaluations. No bonuses. No ladder to climb. And sometimes, that makes it intensely difficult to know if we’re doing this whole ‘motherhood thing’ right at all.

We do laundry. We make meals. We listen, kiss boo...

I love looking over my past prayer lists and prayer journal notes. I fell down a rabbit hole this morning, recalling where I was this time, spring last year.

One trivial thing on my March 2024 prayer list was matching oak nightstands. We currently have 'cheap' laminated particle board nightstands that I paid $5 a piece for at a Goodwill over 12 years ago. Mine has been leaning for a few years. I didn't want to tell anyone else what ...