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When I first moved to West Africa, one of my roles on the team was to spend time with our team’s ministry to orphans and infants in distress. My task was to observe, participate, and look for ways to make the program better. We Americans are always looking for ways to improve things, to make them more efficient and productive.  One of the first things I noticed was that the women who run the day-to-day operations of the infants in distress program spent the vast majority of their time doing home visits. They would hop on their motos, drive out to distant villages, and visit the children and their families in their home environment. The purpose, from my understanding, was to ensure that the children’s home environments were safe and sanitary. The women would spend five minutes checking to see if the baby’s bottles were cleaned properly, give a brief hygiene lesson, and then spend forty-five extra minutes just talking with the family and eating peanuts provided as a hospitality gift. Bec

“I mean, I’ve definitely had more solid plans before,” Kolton said to me over the phone as we talked about the plan for finding the campsite tomorrow night. By solid, he meant foolproof, and by that statement, he acknowledged that his plan could go wrong on multiple levels. But thats how good stories begin.  There is a beautiful waterfall in Arkansas that is situated in a stunning canyon called hemmed-in-hollow. At 204 feet, it is the tallest waterfall between the Appalachians and the Rockies. The trail to get there goes down into the hollow where you can explore the waterfall and rock formations from below. Where the trail does not go is to the top of the bluffs overlooking the waterfall and the expansive valley. But that’s where an unofficial, off-the-beaten-path “secret” campsite was, and we were determined to find it.    “Here’s what we’ll do,” Kolton explained his game plan to me for this weekend’s trip, which included spending the first night on that majestic bluff overlooking h

As soon as I heard that Immerse’s drop-in center was being renovated and that everything inside it needed to be moved out, I sent a text message to the man in charge.  “Is that upright piano still in the drop-in center? And has anyone claimed it? If it has to be moved somewhere, I would love for it to find a home in my apartment during the renovation!”  I didn’t really hear back anything definitively over the next few days, so I figured the old piano had been accounted for. Oh well, it was worth the ask anyway.  I proceeded to have an absolutely lousy week. Things were rough all around - work was stressful, happenings at Immerse and around my apartments were stressful, a few of my relationships were tense and stressful, and my health and sleep patterns were suffering...which was stressful. It was just one of those weeks that everything was going poorly, which sometimes unnecessarily translates into “I am doing poorly at everything.”  But we are to be faithful even when we are not frui

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon in September. 80 degrees and sunshine. My friends and I had overnight camped at Mt. Nebo State Park, and when everyone else decided to pack up and go home, I decided to stay a little while longer and explore the famous mountain bike trails.  I only recently started mountain biking and have found that I really love it. However, I am still very much a beginner. Tip for mountain bike beginners #1: don’t go alone. But I did. Mainly because I hadn’t come all this way with a borrowed bike and rack to just go home without using it on “the best mountain bike trails in Arkansas” according to one of my friends.  So I said a prayer and invited Jesus to go with me. As I rode the trails for the next two and a half hours, I kept my eyes and ears open to anything he wanted to show me or speak to me while I rode and prayed.  I rode the 5 mile rim trail, which was marked easy-moderate, around the top of Mt. Nebo and thoroughly enjoyed it. Once I finished the loop, I

I kept a sticky note on the left side of my keyboard at work. Throughout the day as I remembered things I needed to do when I got off, I jotted them down on the sticky note. Before long, I was running out of room, writing sideways up and down that poor sticky note. I waited for 4:30, not to get off work, but to get to work...to start the one thousand other little things that needed to be done.  Right when I got home, a friend came up to visit with me and I was too busy to even hold a decent conversation with her. I needed to talk to someone who is very important to me on the phone, but all I could think about as I listened to their sweet voice was the one thousand other things I needed to do. I could barely even focus on the task at hand because I had so many other things I needed to do next. And then the smallest hiccup in my mad dash to get things done triggered my impatience and made me snap.  I don’t like this version of myself. When I try to control my time and my schedule — ir

“Where in the world are we going to get bamboo?” I asked doubtfully when my friend announced that we were going to cut down large bamboo stalks In order to build support systems for the tomato plants in his garden. “You’ll see,” he said with a characteristic smirk that always means we’re up for an adventure. He led us right to a nearby local park. If you follow the creek that runs through it, you end up a little bit off the beaten path where, lo and behold, thick bamboo grows strong and tall. Pretty sure cutting down bamboo in a city park is unlawful, but it was for a worthy cause. Back at the garden, we took three bamboo sticks, each cut to six feet, and tied them together at the top. The result was a teepee-like bamboo structure that is rooted into the ground around the tomato plants. In this way, the tomato plants can grow up under them, and the sturdy bamboo provides support for their branches. The tomato plants were already heavy with tomatoes, bending and bowing with the

A Parable of Two Paths Two friends were walking down the same path when they came to a point of contention in the road. It was a point of conflict, some could call it a crisis. Here the path diverged into two separate ways. One path had a small gate and a narrow road. It was a path that chooses the hard thing, the sacrifice of self, in order to pursue reconciliation. Because that’s what Jesus did for us. The other path was wide and broad, and most people end up walking that way because it is easier. It is a path that elevates the self, gratifies the desires of the flesh, and feasts on the ideals of individualism, preference, and personal choice.  One friend had promised to always walk the small, narrow path with the other friend, not knowing the friend would choose the broader road and their paths would diverge.  Father of the Prodigal Son I felt powerless to affect any kind of change in the decision of my friend. Although several of her friends rallied around her to pl

There they were, sitting on display in the middle of an aisle at Walmart — house ferns. I had just recently managed to kill my first house plant, so I figured if these ferns could live in the middle of Walmart, surely one could survive my apartment. I threw it in the basket and took it home, a hardy houseplant. No fuss, easy to care for, anyone can do it — this was how it was marketed, and I bought it.  A few weeks later, the ends of the fern started to turn brown. A quick Google search informed me that my fool-proof, hardy houseplant was either over-watered, under-watered, or fungus-infected. Since I had been watering it every other day or so, my first diagnosis was over-watering, so I took the thing out of its container and set the root ball outside in the shade to dry out for twenty four hours. Then I brought it back inside and started a strict watering schedule once a week...just like google said.  A few days later, the poor fern looked even worse. It was dropping leaves like t

A year ago, I packed all my belongings into a fifty gallon Tupperware box and left West Africa, and for the first time, I had no plan to return.  It was June 29, 2019, a year ago. A year ago, I had no idea what I would be doing in the United States nor how long I would be there. But I would not have imagined that I would still be here a whole year later.  A year ago when I was talking with an African friend about my return to the United States, she said to me, “You need to be prepared to stay longer this time.” This was so contrary to the typical African way of saying what you want to hear, such as “You’ll be back soon” or “We’ll be back together again in just a short while”, that I knew her words to be from the Lord.  “God is faithful,” she reminded me as we parted.  A year ago I prayed, asking the Lord whether I should seek some kind of permanency in the United States, specifically whether I should get an apartment and a job. Little did I know how God would provide

Have you ever had a friend that you thought you knew pretty well, when all of the sudden you learned something fascinating about them that you never knew? It’s like going over to a friend’s house and seeing a remarkable painting on the wall. “Where did you get this?” you ask. “Oh, I painted that,” she replies, to which you realize that your friend loves to paint and you simply never knew it. So your friend shows you more of her work, and its fantastic, and you feel as if you’ve been let in on a sacred and beautiful part of your friend’s heart. You know her better because of it, and you admire her deeper. That’s how I felt about God when I started to befriend Africans. God is too wonderfully complex and beautiful to be expressed in any one color or culture. So he creatively put a piece of his heart into every tribe, people, nation, and culture. The diversity of nations  and races paints a larger picture of the character of God, and knowing a race or culture different from your own

Slipping my arms through the straps and then tightening the belt around my waist, I could feel the weight off a weekend’s worth of food, clothes, and camping gear as it settled on my shoulders.  Less tangible but even weightier was the burden I was carrying in my spirit, a sum accumulated over the course of the past couple of weeks. It wasn’t the pain of my own problems, but rather the pain of many other people who are very dear to me. The hardships of my friends, the suffering of my patients, the brokenness of relationships, the injustices in the world, and the millions of people who are trying to manage all this apart from Christ — it all began to pile up like bad news upon bad news, like struggles upon sadness.  As I started to walk down the trail into the woods, I knew that I would have to carry this heavy pack for miles over hills and across creeks. But my dad has taught me that backpacks are designed to help you carry weight correctly, and the secret is making the right

Sitting down on the warm smooth rocks, I dangled my feet in the cool, clear water. After a two and a half mile hike, my sister and I found this off-the-berated-path waterfall. Worth it. The sound of rushing waters drowned out the sound of everything except my thoughts. The calm I felt in the middle of this moment in this middle of this wilderness was so entirely opposite to the stress I lived under this past week. I took a deep breath of misty air and let out a sigh as I remembered how I had wrestled my chaotic thoughts and lost sleep over them. The stress was not linked to any one particular stressor but rather a thousand small ones that I just couldn’t shake off. All the things I needed to do. All the things I wanted to do better. It was that steady, low-lying undertow of stress that almost swept me away this past week. I watched my sister splash about playfully in the falls while I chose to soak up some sun and stay warm. My eyes lifted to the top of the falls. Right where the w

The coronavirus may have shut the doors of churches on Sunday mornings, but it has not stopped the church from meeting. It all started when I went on a camping trip the weekend that the quarantine was initiated. For the first five minutes of the car ride, we gave everyone permission to say whatever they wanted about Covid, and then for the rest of the trip it was banned to speak of it. Instead of dwelling on coronavirus, we embraced the outdoors, explored scenic byways, hiked to the top of a mountain, wound our way up to a waterfall, and lingered long around campfires. All the while, we mingled between story-telling, joking, and talking about life and Jesus. The serious, the sacred, the lightheartedness, and the laughter became inseparable. We breathed the fresh air, and also our hearts breathed afresh from the mutual encouragement of the others. We watched the evening campfire die while knowing that a fire had been kindled in our souls. Upon our return Saturday evening, we hadn’

Not too long ago, I had a young woman living with me who was a delight to be around. And I really think it was because she enjoyed the simplest of things. A bag of hot chips from the grocery store and a walk in the park could absolutely make her day. She also loved to get out and do things with me — church, small group, the movies, a Super Bowl party. We regularly ate dinner together, and at least once a week we would pull our groceries together and cook. Sometimes after dinner in the lull of the conversation, she would contentedly announce, “Today has been a good day.” As if that’s all that needed to be said. And perhaps it was.  A little more recently, a different friend asked me if I had had a good day, to which I gave a half-hearted, kind-of-sort-of yes. Because he is kind, he followed up with a great question. “What makes a good day?” How do you measure that?  “I think it has to do with the conversations we have,” I said. “Good conversations make a good day.” And by good