It is shortly after midnight, and I'm sitting in a dim hospital room, listening to Tasha breathe, waiting for the miracle that will happen within the next 18 hours, according to the doctor. Have you ever had so many emotions and thoughts and feelings, all at the same time, that you just are left...speechless? That's how I feel. But I want so much to communicate-- to document this … [Read more...] about On Laboring Together: a birth story
Living Faith
Sometimes Trusting God Means Leaving Space
I have a wall in my house that displays the footprints of God's miracles in our lives. We were barren, you know, unable to have children-- yet, there they are. Three sets of miracles that came in ways we never expected. The line begins with a giant 8-year-old footprint and handprint from our first adoption. We brought our daughter home and recreated a few of the baby-things most families … [Read more...] about Sometimes Trusting God Means Leaving Space
How to Face Loss Without Losing Faith
The first time we lost a baby, I almost lost myself. It was a couple years into my marriage, after I had faced off with infertility and finally saw two pink lines on a pregnancy test, only to spend hours on the bathroom floor as blood and tears marked the end of hope. My entire vision clouded with the tragedy of that broken dream. I wondered why God would play such a cruel trick on me and in … [Read more...] about How to Face Loss Without Losing Faith
To the Believer Who is Discouraged and Exhausted
In the book of I Kings we meet Elijah, a man of God who confronts kings and nations, who is instrumental in miracles that include raising people from the dead and fire dropping from the heavens. He’s a pretty intense prophet who lived during a particularly dark period in Israel’s history—a truth that put him on the wrong end of politics more than once. And in the middle of his story we … [Read more...] about To the Believer Who is Discouraged and Exhausted
Being Named: The Truth About Sarah, Abraham, and Me
When I read the story of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis, I am struck by one unfaltering thought: God’s description of them in the New Testament doesn’t exactly match their storyline. I’m serious. Sarah was willing to abuse Hagar to try and get the son she had been promised. She laughed when God still insisted that she would bear a child. She set Hagar and Ishmael away, despite the agony it … [Read more...] about Being Named: The Truth About Sarah, Abraham, and Me
Embracing the Thread of Redemption in Your Story
Ten years ago we lived in Haiti and our friends there would ask when we would have children. At that point, we were in our second year of marriage and hope was still bright, despite the doctor’s comments, so we’d shrug and tell them, “Whenever God wills it.” For years after we came home, those same friends would call and chat. One of their first questions was always whether our children had … [Read more...] about Embracing the Thread of Redemption in Your Story