Dear Alexandra,

You don’t know me and I wish you didn’t have to. Today I read an article about something that happened to you. Something that should never have happened to you. By someone that should never have treated you with such hate. Someone that claims to be a believer like I am. A follower of Jesus. A christian. 

I don’t know about you but life has not been easy for me. It’s been quite the opposite, in fact. I have not always been what you would call a good christian. I suppose that’s what makes me all the more desperate and in need of grace. Of forgiveness. I am a seriously hot mess, in fact. On a scale of 1 to 10, an easy 12. So I suppose that’s why it's fairly easy for me to love people around me and extend empathy. And I suppose that’s also why I also find it so easy to relate with so many people in the Bible. So many of the people Jesus hung out with. Got to know. To love...

We all like a happy ending don’t we? We want that warm fuzzy feeling that everything is going to be okay. That everything has worked out. That everyone has gotten what they wanted.  

When we look at the Easter story we have a tendency to focus on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, right? The Death and the Resurrection. But was of Saturday? I had never really thought much about this middle day until I heard a song by a friend of mine several years ago. Saturday’s Disciples, by Rachel Kurtz.  

Raw. Intimate. Vulnerable. Transparent. Challenging. 

Reality... 

"Parenting is easy. Said no person ever.” Love, my dear friend Christy Cass 

This was recently texted to me. I had just gotten done panicking, wanting to know when her kids stopped napping. This is not a joke. Not an exaggeration. In my head the ship was going down and we were all going with it. The entire world was ending and there was nothing to do about it. Life as I knew it was over...

Recently I went on a vacation to South Beach, Miami. I stayed at a place right on the beach near the pier, the most affluent and expensive part of town. I was able to do so because of a deal I found online and a free flight voucher, not because I’m wealthy. I mean, I still get groceries from the food shelf.  

It felt weird. It’s the second time I’ve been there now. Vacation feels weird, actually. I don’t do vacation. I don’t do relaxation. I find that I am fairly incapable of doing just nothing. of just resting.  

This is a problem...

2015 was a ______ year. You can go ahead and fill that in. With just about any adjective really. Here’s a brief break down of what we’ve just been through.

Cops killing civilians. Civilians killing cops. Worldwide terrorists attacks. Mass shootings. Mass abductions. Earthquakes. Floods. Landslides. Baby parts being sold. People killing people in the name of those baby parts. Refugee babies washing up on distant shorelines. Terrorists posing as refugees. Political scandal. Politicians with bad hair reminding us that humanity is a sad broken machine. History repeating itself in the most obvious and obnoxious ways...