Psychologist Carl Jung said : "Where your fear is, there is your task." I am not sure what Jung meant by this. Nonetheless, it has impacted me as I have battled fear lately. Here's how: First, it has caused me to get very specific about the details of my fear. Though it is a strange […]

One of the main reasons that many of us refuse to get involved with hurting people is that we believe we need to fix them. And we know we can’t. A friend whose child has cancer… A friend whose spouse walks out… A stranger in need… We know we do not have an easy answer […]

Christians have such a weird relationships with hard emotions. I think it is because we often are led to believe that expressing sadness, disappointment, anger, or fear means that we don't trust God, we don't believe God is good; that we are somehow failing God  by being less than perfectly cheerful every day of our lives. […]

This bit of wisdom really struck me: "The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to […]

This is a post from several years back. We refer to "the art of the shim" often! We recently sent an old bookshelf from our house to our daughter's new apartment. I bought the bookshelf used at a thrift store. It is rich with history, dings, and uneven footing. There was concern it might not […]

As I sat on my porch this morning after the flurry of a few days of travel, this thought came to mind: "I am practicing living in the beautiful tension of life's imperfections." I am not great at this. My tendency, my temptation is to try to fix it all. It is hard for me […]