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Navigating Conflicting Advice When Experts Disagree: Sifting Through Multiple Options to Find What God Wants
If you’re one of the 19 new friends from last weekend at Mount Hermon to join this blog party, welcome! If you’re a regular reader, let’s give a golf clap to the new people! (tap, tap, tap) This week I returned from the Vision Christian Writers Conference in the Redwoods where I taught two seminars, hosted a lunch table twice, took classes, and stayed mentally engaged for five days. I connected with young people, old people, beginning writers, professionals, semi-famous authors, and everyone in between. And I only put my foot in my mouth once! Progress, friend. Tiiiiiny bits of progress. Of course, my faux pas made me want to…
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Heart Attack vs. Acid Reflux: How Our Trip to the ER Taught Us the Difference and How To Be Prepared
After an hour and a half of sleep last Tuesday, I awoke to a gnarly feeling across my whole chest that grabbed both shoulders, clenched my ticker and wouldn’t let go. If that’s too manly of a description for ya, here’s a more feminine version: I felt a smidge of pressure around my décolleté with a petit side of warm fuzzies gently pushing on my heart. Any-way… the point is I couldn’t sleep. Back, side, front, other side—didn’t matter. I couldn’t get comfortable and the pain intensified so I finally got up. Within minutes I stood in our family room staring at my phone arguing with myself about whether or…
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My 4-Day Frustrating Forced Phone Fast: What I Learned in the Silence of Being Unplugged
Day: Saturday morning Location: Apple store Issue: Stripes on screen I stood on the curb at the quaint mall, 20 minutes before they opened, fifth in line. I hid my irritation around the nearby strangers, but inside I felt my nerves starting to get on each other. It’s fine. I’m sure it’ll be fine. It’s just stripes. A few stripes are fine. It’ll be fine, right? Oh my gosh—what if it’s not fine? “Hi. How can I help you?” I turned my phone in the man’s direction. “I have an issue.” “Ohhh, yes.” He tried to hide his best-guess diagnosis, but I knew he knew. My issue consisted of irregular…
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Baby Steps, Bob: How to Replace the Overwhelming Thing with the Next Thing
If you’ve seen one of my favorite movies, What About Bob, you know taking baby steps (literally) is what got Bob Wiley out of his own head. Repeating the words “baby steps” also got him on a bus, through a sliding door, and on a boat… all things that previously terrified him. Similarly, if you’ve read Bob Goff’s books or listened to his podcast, you know he loves the word ambition. Always challenging people, he does a great job of encouraging his audience to figure out what they want and go for it. Sounds effortless coming from a man who already possesses ambition… and a bank account to back up…
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September Fire, Welcome Rain: The Disaster in SoCal This Week and How Your Family Can Help
If you hadn’t heard of the town of Hemet before the 5th of September, you’re not alone. Nestled inland from the Temecula Valley and Riverside, it’s not exactly a vacation destination. It’s the town we go through to get to Palm Springs, Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead. If you’ve never been there, here’s some context: And just a few miles away sits the de facto international Scientology headquarters; a huge and bizarre compound you would not want to be a part of. Combine all that with a handful of garage meth labs, a growing fentanyl problem and one of the highest homeless populations in Riverside County. So it hasn’t exactly…
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Dealing with Disappointment: 5 Things I Learned from a Rough Family Vacation Last Week
I know, I know. Simply being on vacation should be reason enough to not complain, right? Having money to pay for gas, a cabin, and fun activities should override any thoughts of disappointment if it didn’t go as you planned. Aaaaand there’s the issue: it didn’t go as I planned. Before you roll your eyes and label me “entitled,” hear me out. I realize none of us actually deserve to go on vacations. The majority of the world has probably never come close to even having such thoughts. But since I live in middle-class America and my husband and I both work hard to be able to play, here we…
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A Neighborhood Divided: Years of Friends, Months of Loss, Weeks of Grief
When we moved out of Baja and back to Cali, I wasn’t what you’d call… excited. Besides the whole experience feeling anti-climactic (we already lived in SoCal once), track houses aren’t really my jam. Apparently, the neighborhood cookie-cutter fairy put all of our floor plans on a blueprint and the creativity stopped after five. Five similar shapes, five coordinating paint schemes, and that was it. Match-y match-y ain’t my style. Plus, I didn’t see a whole lot of ministry taking place between getting the mail and pulling in trashcans. I don’t mean to sound like a whiner. I’m truly grateful for Model #3 to call home and know millions around…
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Kicked Out of the Bank: When Rejection Suddenly Strikes You and Your Family
A few years into Baja living, my husband learned to roll with the inconvenient punches, knew exactly how to pay all the bills in person, and understood the cultural norms. But of all the places we visited in the city, going to a Mexican bank never felt fun. Between 230 cars jockeying for 13 parking spaces, sketchy holes in the sidewalks and a general feeling of being a tad nervous carrying too much cash, I preferred to stay in the car. Or at home. At least their banks had real police officers packin’ heat at the front door. None of this rent-a-cop packin’ snacks nonsense you find in the States. …
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Mexican Manna: Do You Know What You Need?
In case you’re considering launching a cross-cultural ministry, organic enterprise or local venture, here are two things I wish someone would have told me before our family took off for the great unknown. Buckle up—they’re both extremely complex and ridiculously basic: On some level, I already knew about these two things because, well… life. But wow. I had no idea how scary true they would prove to be. From the beginning, through the middle, and after the end, my husband and I felt the effects of every emotion that came from human disappointment. Friend/family, old/young, poor/rich… didn’t matter. But right on the heels of every one of our bugged eyes…
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It’s Beginning to Look a lot Like Chaos: 4 Ways I Fight the Christmas Crazy
If you’re anything like me, you would rather not be found sitting in a corner on Christmas morning, sucking on candy cane plastic and rocking to the beat of Santa Baby. I know if I run at the normal American pace though, I’ll be up wrapping gifts till three in the morning and sliding into Christmas slightly bitter and more coo-coo than ever. So I made some new choices this year. Not everyone will like all of them, but when I went back to work I think I added a bit of “I care less about what people think” to my résumé. I often describe this season as organized chaos.…
