Who We Are

  In my time as a flight attendant, there was the experience each flight of the physical effect that being airborne had on the body.  I felt heavier, my fingers swelled so that I couldn’t wear my wedding rings and my ears would fill with pressure that often didn’t clear until well after landing.  Although now I spend my days on the ground, I still experience the world through feeling and acknowledge the physical toll of the day-to-day turbulence of life. While serving the public in a grocery store, the volatile commotion in politics and the recent global pandemic has complicated all my interactions.  I have lacked grace during this season and have felt weighed down by judgement and resentment of others’ views, of their posts on social media and of their silence, for seemingly not taking the pandemic seriously, for sending their kids to school sick, for refusing to seek testing for Covid-19, for choosing not to wear a mask.  I judge myself and my actions the ...

  My husband is a teacher in our town, placing us both in active roles interacting with our community.  The atmosphere in the education system has certainly been a bumpy ride while navigating this pandemic and political landscape as well.  Between our two points of exposure, and immediately after a weekend stay in the city for my husband’s 40 th Birthday, we were the first in our subsequent workplaces to contract Covid-19.  My husband had a rapid onset and was fever-ridden for five days.  I experienced a slower burn with symptoms of sore throat and headache for six days before fever hit, followed by body aches that combined, had me bedridden for eight days.     Prior to contracting Covid-19, I hadn’t claimed a sick day from work in years.  This virus took me out like no other sickness has before.  Our kids stayed home from school for a month as we respected the isolation process, and I was heartbroken to miss my ...

At some point, amongst the crushing waves of pain and hard hitting despair, Kevin calls me, saying he has something to tell me, wanting to make sure I am home. This cold intro causes an intense reaction from my body. Historically, Kevin had always delivered the worst news, out of nowhere, a feeling, even now, percolates even when he opens his mouth to start speaking to me. Before this Kevin had been given a sexual integrity test, which flagged him as addicted to sex. I was floored, feeling naive, and further betrayed. But Kevin has a seemingly laissez-faire attitude when telling me, I am confused as to what this all really means, and in reality, am in no way prepared for what this addiction really means.  As I waited for Kevin to come home, I went over hypotheticals, I had demanded he tell me what was going on, but he would not purge any sort of narrative. I completely thought the other person involved with him had killed themself or had tried to. This did n...

    I’ve been wondering how to have grace during this season.  Not grace in theory, as a religious concept or a fleeting uttered benediction, but literal goodwill in day-to-day interactions.  The turbulent political climate and the global pandemic has sapped my soul of its empathy.  And, I have lost a great deal of trust in my community.  Never one to always see the best in others, as much as I admire the quality, however I did believe that most people care about their neighbors, particularly those in the Christian faith.  I grew up having Mark 12:31 impressed upon me, “’Love your neighbor as yourself’.  There is no commandment greater than these.”  Seeing people in the church who I thought upheld this scripture, openly support racist politics and choose their own comfort over the chance that wearing a mask may benefit another, has shattered that trust.     We have taken sides and formed alliances....

When we had settled in the new church, new neighborhood and with Elijah as a newborn, Kevin sat me down and simply said I was going to have to make friends in town. We had lived in Michigan, for about three years, but this move to SW Michigan had removed my previous life in Flint by about three hours. Kevin had been traveling back and forth between St. Joe and our apartment right up until Elijah was born. We had Elijah and then, very pragmatically, moved across the state three days later. I was reluctant to plug into anything. Not knowing what to do with a newborn child aside, church people or church life had never been a culture I related to, not because of my love or commitment for Jesus, but really because, for the most part, the Christian people I had been around since we had been married were inside of a tough, traditionalist box.    Kevin gently lays out a plan, I will attend a weekly women’s bible study that has childcare and seemingly teaches relevant curriculum. At th...

Taking stock on the definition of privilege is an ongoing check. An evolving habit often mandating little expectation on the other side of service, but a high expectation on oneself. I consider a lot of service a privilege. Stopping myself from defining a yoke of service, past privilege only, is a daily practice. When I allow myself to consider service to others anything other than an absolute, humbled, privilege I fall really short of where Jesus has asked me to be. I fall off this work horse constantly, throw my heart back on the saddle, and try to move forward. What is often considered burdensome has the potential to free, expand, or ignite another. I obsess over the "Pull Yourself Up by your Own Bootstraps" adage. Not to further on the miscontrued nature of the well-loved myth, but to knock the head off. My service to others, freely given, speaking only to holding the responsibility of someone else's potential, matters.  My children come to mind, alongside of those mu...

What if we lived in a world where no one had to ask because it had already been given. No one would need a hand out or a hand up because we had all collectively chosen let go, refusing to anticipate getting or receiving, because this mentality goes against Who We Are. We facilitate growth, letting go of what was not ours in the first place, pushing forward an entity that could propel another into an entirely different universe. What if what’s mine is yours, and I see safety inside of you?   Regardless of how beautiful any other religion is, regardless of how much we pretend and create stories over others, no matter any of our collective efforts to edge out our fellow man, in a world of difference, of superiority, the foundation of equity laid by the Son of Man is unquestionable.  Over and over again, He extends the answer. To forgive, to love, to be the last in line.  Even when we know it ourselves. And have the audacity to ask, once more, for clarificat...

Church leadership advises or asks us to not attend services at the campus we led; they do offer, in a conciliatory way, to attend services at another campus. This proposition is not readily accepted by Kevin or I, as he can barely hold his head above water when around others. Friends ask if we want Harper and Elijah to attend the kid’s program, the same program they had both been attending since birth. The same children’s ministry I had covered when we were down on volunteers, even though, I for the most part, had really never enjoyed being around children. I decline, as my realization of how to move forward in this impossible situation is murky, and I have to plug the hemmorrhage of suffering and confusion for the kids. A voice of reason is in me, but the roof is only over the kids and Kevin. All I do is cry. Then sob. I try to ask questions, to myself, and then to Kevin, but we are both caged animals, trapped under a magnifying lens, beaming a consistent concentration of immeasurable...