Church, are we willing to listen?

April 17, 2023.Reading time 11 minutes.

Cultivating belonging in the church through storytelling This post was originally published on Substack in August 2022. To receive this content early and join a community of people discussing issues around faith and community candidly, subscribe to Courage & Candor here. We were a total mess. Freshly wounded from being fired as youth pastors, deep […]

When you hunger for more than crackers & juice

February 14, 2023.Reading time 15 minutes.

A short essay about deconstructing the practice of the Eucharist and how I was able to regain it’s true meaning.

Who’s going to pay for the gas?

November 23, 2022.Reading time 11 minutes.

The messy and beautiful parts of living in community.

The Orphaned Church

October 17, 2022.Reading time 10 minutes.

When church is no longer home * This post was originally published on Substack in May 2022. To receive this content early and join a community of people discussing issues around faith and community candidly, subscribe to Courage & Candor here. I never loved the term “orphaned believer” used by writer, Sara Billups. It is […]

How to pray (when you suck at it)

September 11, 2022.Reading time 10 minutes.

When prayer is hard and you wonder – am I doing this right? I get it and I have a few things to say about believing I suck at prayer and to learning to love it.

What’s saving my life right now (+ blog update)

July 20, 2022.Reading time 6 minutes.

Find out what’s next on the blog, plus a few things that are saving my life right now!

How To Become Shame Resilient

October 2, 2021.Reading time 13 minutes.

Shame happens; in this journey and frankly, throughout our lives. We can’t completely eliminate shame; it will somehow find a way to get to us because shame is what happens to us and not about our own sinful nature. However, we can become resilient to it. I have adapted this teaching from Brene Brown’s audio teaching “Men, Women, and Worthiness”. You can buy the full teaching on iTunes, Amazon, or Audible. I highly recommend it. Here is a short summary of Brown’s shame resiliency steps.

What I Leaned This Summer

September 12, 2021.Reading time 11 minutes.

I am not the best at reflection. I am more of a plunge forward continually until I exhaust myself and find myself crying for no apparent reason, kind of person. I have watched Emily P. Freeman do a quarterly reflection blog for every season for quite some time now, and I thought I would give this a go. Here are 7 things I have learned this summer in no particular order.

A Lesson In Lament

September 9, 2021.Reading time 8 minutes.

er of negative test results, is it more cost-efficient to buy the big pack or just too painful? I grab a 2 pack and head for the door. Only being 7 days late, the expectations come flooding into my heart and the self-talk starts…

5 Ways Perfectionism Is Blocking Your Creativity (and how to stop it)

July 12, 2021.Reading time 9 minutes.

I can’t tell you how many times I show up to a blank document and find myself already wishing for a final draft to magically appear. This is one of my biggest mental blocks when it comes to writing and my creative life. Just the sight of a blank page, and I am instantly in panic over the foreseeable rough draft: the run-on sentences, the bad grammar, the unformed thesis and my tendency to overuse the word “that”.