This weekend, we planted aloe, a plant that I had in my home growing up. I can remember one summer in elementary school helping my mom grill a sandwich in the super snacker panini press. As I was watching for the light to come on indicating my sandwich was ready, my thumb touched the small …
Leaning Into Lent: Conserving Energy
As we began our Lenten journey, I cautioned that forty days is long and it gets longer the closer we get to the end of the journey. I never imagined that we would be dealing with a pandemic during the season of Lent. The president’s words were certainly daunting thinking that the two to three …
Leaning Into Lent: Planting Healing
This weekend, we worked together on our garden watching over our seedlings, giving them water, and making sure they had enough sunlight. We also planted two small aloe runners that were taking over our neighbor’s yard. As we were working together, I thought this was truly a picture of what this season of “shelter-in-place” is …
Leaning Into Lent: Fatigue
Whenever we began this Lenten journey, I joked that it would feel long, longer than forty days. When I said that I didn’t know what else we would be carrying this Lenten season. I didn’t know we would be carrying the collective grief of losing a way of life we had become so accustomed to. …
Leaning Into Lent: Transitioning
Each morning after we wake up and have breakfast, we change into clothes to get ready for our day and then take a walk around our neighborhood. It’s our time of transitioning from home to “school”. The same type of transitioning we used to find in our drive to school. Yesterday, the governor of South …
Leaning Into Lent: Not Knowing
Last week about this time, I began to understand that our lives were going to be drastically different. Although I had followed the news and the developments in China, it all still felt so far away. Last week about this time, things began to be canceled in large numbers. It wasn’t just the schools that …
Leaning Into Lent: Energy Boost
This morning, my dedication was renewed after a wonderful time of worship online. There was so much that happened last week so quickly that it really was very difficult to process through everything: schools closing, cancelling vacations, moving to working from home and homeschooling. I don’t know about you but I ended every day exhausted …
Leaning Into Lent: Washing Sippy Cups
Tonight I was washing the dishes. As I washed our fourteen month old’s sippy cup, I realized that her nametag was coming off. My mind immediately went to trying to remember where I had put the cute, pink masking tap and the brand new black sharpie so that I could replace the label so that …
Leaning Into Lent: Unexpected Growth
Five Lenten seasons ago, I took on the task of trying to free a butterfly bush in our yard from the entanglement of a prickly weed that was strangling its growth and stealing all its nutrients. Turns out that I wasn’t actually freeing a butterfly bush but a Bradford Pear tree that had been struck …
Leaning Into Lent: Finding Light
For all of the Lenten season in which I have pastored, I have always challenged my congregants to resist the temptation to skip the darkness to find the light. I have asked them instead to sit in the darkness and to contemplate why it is so difficult for us to sit in darkness and why …