Present Over Perfect

Our family is not perfect, but I grew up with a dad who communicated to me in no uncertain terms that ...

ministry is not thriving. Our family fared reasonably well during this season. Our boys were small, and ...

be, must be; when you hand them the pen and tell them to write your story, you don’t get the ...

the kingdom if that work is destroying this member of that kingdom. If you burned down your garden in ...

What I am leaving behind doesn’t leave me empty: it leaves me full, and powerful, purposed and stronger t ...

building of my brand (a term I abhor) or the wider Christian brand (another term I abhor). It is fo ...

listening required emotional resources I’d long since depleted. Part of the crazy of it is that we ...

lifting something that was never meant to be carried alone. ...

On Jesus As I arrive nearer and nearer to the heart of things—at least as close as I’m able to get right ...

The temperature’s dropping as the sun dips behind the clouds. I feel like I’ve sat on every bench ...

the center is strength, gratitude, Jesus. I’m practicing that last part, to be honest. For reasons I still do ...

adults struggle to recover that wild courage to make and imagine and play. And I’m learning that ...

Part 5 Living in Time The greatest tragedy of human existence is not to live in time, in both senses of th ...

Clearing Away Of all the things I’m learning to leave behind, one of the heaviest is the opinion of others. One o ...

Some of what I’m leaving behind in this season is the need to please everyone. I want to respect all ...

the whisper of my own soul. And when you learn to listen to that voice, the screaming of the crowd matters l ...

Learning to Play One of my new things (of which there are many these days —I feel sort of adolescent, chang ...

do everything better/faster/smarter, how to streamline, multitask, layer, balance, flow, juggle. How to ...

Morning and Evening I’ve always stayed up later than I should, wringing the last moments out of the day, po ...

leggings—the same ones I’d wear if we went for a walk. And a T-shirt—the same one I’d wear if we we ...