June 28, 2023
Seven days ago, we said goodbye to our very sweet 12-year-old Goldendoodle, Einstein. A few weeks ago we noticed that he was having trouble maintaining his balance, his back legs sliding out from under him. A week after that, he had a seizure. It was traumatic for all of us. We took him to the emergency vet who offered admission, sedation, MRIs, and continuous IV anti-seizure medications. I sat in the sterile confines of the vet ER office with my...
May 27, 2023
Alright y’all, welcome back to my crazy little brain. Yesterday, my dad sent me a podcast about the Four Stages of Faith. It’s worth a listen. If you don’t have time, check out this great summary chart. The Four Stages of Faith are simplicity, complexity, perplexity, and harmony. Author Brian McLaren obviously knows there are a lot of us doing this deconstruction/detangle thing. And it’s bewildering. His framework helps me see that I am normal, this is a process, and...
May 7, 2023
Warning: I am angry. Last night there was another mass shooting. This time in Texax (again). At least 8 dead, many others wounded. Unmeasured psychological trauma for the hundreds involved, lives forever changed for witnessing and responding to chaos and murder. Politicians literally copying and pasting their “thoughts and prayers” messages once again. It’s a chilling and disgusting cycle. Today’s reading is Matthew 6:5-15, The Lord’s Prayer. I’ve taken the liberty to give a modern spin on Jesus’ words. Hang...
May 6, 2023
I got the chance to talk to a dear friend this morning. We are both surgeons, wives, and moms. We talk about our kids, our work, our marriages. And we talk about our faith. Or what’s left of it anyway. We both grew up in similar types of churches and shared a good number of similar conservative beliefs. But throughout the last few years, we have both been searching in our faith journey. Questioning, leaning in in some areas, and...
April 30, 2023
We have arrived at a time in US history in which the ink isn’t even dry on one story of a mass shooting, and another one has happened. There are so many mass shootings, that we can’t recall the cities and places where they occur, we have to look them up. There are entire websites dedicated to collecting data and documenting the tragedies, one after the other. It’s a continuous news cycle of senseless death. Sadly, our American appetite for...
April 22, 2023
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” –Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride. Blessed. We throw that word around a lot, but I’m not always certain we really grasp what it means. Or the depth of what it could mean. The English language, bless its heart, consistently gives us one word for something that in another language would have multiple words to describe a range of rich meanings. Think about the word...
April 15, 2023
I’m still in Matthew 5, still in the Beatitudes. And gonna be here for a while. There is a lot to digest. I promised you I would show you my messy parts here because I know my messy parts are not unique to me. So buckle up, let’s talk about our hard stuff, and grow together. I am a people pleaser. I mean, to the Nth degree. I want people to like me. Even people who don’t really know me....
April 9, 2023
A few days ago, our youngest son, Sam, asked if we were going to church on Sunday. We haven’t gone to church on a Sunday morning in about three years (save for Christmas Eve service with extended family), so I was curious where this question came from. Sam attends a non-denominational youth group-like gathering with some of his school buddies. Think: Young Life as we had in high school. While I have my reservations about organizations such as these, I...
April 8, 2023
One of the first things I have had to do in this journey is let go of searching for the “one right thing” and learn to live in the messy middle, the grey zone, the gauzy center. I was raised in a conservative Baptist church and school from birth to age 12 or 13, then we moved to a more contemporary Methodist church. (Much more to come on all of this in future posts). But needless to say, my very...
April 7, 2023
I wasn’t going to do this. No need to hash this out in public. But as I have been wrestling for more than a year now about my journey with (away from?) the church, and the more I realize that many others are doing the same, I wondered if we could learn from each other…so I’m keeping an open journal of this journey. Background: In summary, the 2016 election followed by the response to COVID massively disrupted my faith in...