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Mary
It’s hard to imagine the heart failing of someone who loved me so well. Maybe she was finally convinced we’d be okay without her. Maybe her body was just finished; certainly not her mind. Maybe it was just time. I think I’ve learned you can prepare to make an end of living, but not death, for…
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To Be A Dad One Day
If I had kids, I see them now. My little girl is sensitive and playful, not sensitive as in easily hurt, sensitive as in curious and attentive to the emotions around her and her own. She approaches the world with an intuitive regard for good without suspicion. She likes people and giving compliments. She…
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The God and the Ghost of Present Christmas
I read an Instagram post by Craig Groeschel about Christmas being a magnifier today. (For those of you who don’t know who Craig Groeschel is, he’s one of those muscular pastors that talks about how he doesn’t have time to dress himself in the morning) The intent of his post was to state how the…
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Lord of the Bowel Movement
Yesterday was monumental. I prayed with a 92 year-old-woman who had a bowel movement in her bed, specifically a poop, immediately after I prayed for her. I didn’t know it right away. A nurse who came into the room shortly after me, reported back and thanked me. Apparently, they had been waiting for the patient…
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Willing But So Weak
I had one of those deathbed Jesus moments last week. I was with a patient while they died whom was reconciled to God the week before. I did not save the man, all I did was remind him that God was willing to forgive him because of the work of Jesus Christ. All I could…
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Wealthy Mercy
“But God is so rich in mercy…” I believe you can tell how rich and deep someone’s faith is by how generous they are with mercy. I believe this because according to God’s sense of justice, people deserve harsh consequences for their wrongs, yet God is slow to deal judgment. In Ephesians 2:4, the Apostle…
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On Loneliness, Loss, and Lasting Love
This is it folks, the blog post that will break the internet. If you couldn’t tell by the title I’m ambitiously going to person-splain the meaning of life. But before I get into it and switch gears, allow me to set the stage of the state I am in while I’m writing. I’m eating candy…
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When the Game Slows Down
My orientation into chaplaincy has begun. Who knew orientation could feel so disorienting? While inundated with information, it is amazing how many golden nuggets of truth and wisdom I have received in a weeks time. One statement I am fixated on, even though I have not yet visited a single patient is this: “The game…
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Mommy and Dad (as you are in my phone) I Hope I get this Right
I’m so naïve. It didn’t take long. I wept for the first time today, and it wasn’t because I visited a church during an emotional service where they were saying goodbye to some people they really love, to send them to Burundi perhaps indefinitely. I didn’t weep because I was confronted with my own darkness,…
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What do I do with these blank pages?
In 2010 I wrote to be funny, more specifically I wrote comedic fiction for a class to counterbalance writing my thesis on Islamic extremism in Southern Russia and what exactly that looked like. But what I was most proud of is a story called the Cheesebringer, which was a dumb coming of age story about…
The Long Rebuild
The Reconstructed 