Last Friday, I shared the news here I’d be attending school this fall. I’m so grateful for the words of encouragement and support! I have one additional piece of news to share. I just signed a contract with Beacon Hill Press to write a book with the working title Redeeming Regret: From Shackles To Shalom. Regret often imprisons women in the…

In the novella-length essay that closes Letters and Life: On Being A Writer, On Being A Christian (Crossway, 2012), author Bret Lott took me back to the day my mom died, and the shadowed valley of days that came after that. The emotional landscape of his relationship with his dad throughout his life was quite different than…

Back-to-school is in the air this month, and another generation of parents is trying to figure out where their kids will be learning to read, write, cipher and make baking soda-and-vinegar-fueled volcanoes this year. Public school, private school or home school? We home schooled our kids through high school. Our youngest graduated from our kitchen…

In 2012, I wrote a post for Christianity Today’s Her.meneutics blog entitled, “When Higher Education Is Neither: Why Should I Earn A Degree?” In it, I explained my lifestyle of learning, as well as the longstanding truce I’d made my my decision not to complete college: I found myself back on staff at an evangelical college and…

Sarah Bessey, a gifted thirty-something writer, noted in her post last week atChristianity Today’s Her.meneutics blog that as she was pulling together research for an upcoming book, she discovered how many midlife women felt marginalized by church and culture alike. She noted that the church often mirrors culture in way that cause pain for those of a certain…

I don’t really resonate with examples of courage that include mountain climbing, wire walking or jumping out of airplanes. I do respect those who have the ability to silence their own common sense so they can choose to push beyond their own limits mentally and physically, but they do not inspire me to exercise my own courage…