Posts

Ask a Young Clergy Woman: PK’s in the Pews Edition

Dear Askie, My husband and I are both clergy, and parents of three kids, ages 3, 5, and 6. Although we’re a clergy couple, we never actually both had Sunday morning churches until recently. (I stayed home with the kids when the first two were babies, and then I pastored a church and he worked […]

The Nearness of the Clouds

Just before Christmas, I preached at the funeral of a beloved church and community member named Wendy. She struggled with cancer for many, many years—far more years than I knew her. We became especially close in the last two years of her life: years which were also marked with my mom’s cancer diagnosis and death. […]

Ask a Young Clergy Woman: Holiday Drama Edition

Dear Askie, My daughter is a Pastor and I am so upset that she won’t come home for Christmas. We had wonderful family Christmases but now she’s always missing. She takes off at other times so why can’t she take off for one Christmas! She cares more about her congregation than her family! She knows […]

Ask a Young Clergy Woman: Attitude of Gratitude Edition

Dear Askie, I know that gratitude is a good thing and that there are so many blessings in my life… I have enough to eat, work I feel called to, people who love me and whom I love, and so much more. But honestly, it sometimes feels stilted this time of year. With Advent planning, […]

A Vision

It’s the closest I’ve ever come to having a vision. There were no trances or hallucinations, no fevered frenzy or mystic insights for the ages. There was nothing dramatic that would call attention to myself or invite curious questions about my sanity. There was nothing like that. It was just an image that came quietly, […]

Four Thoughts on Incorporating Faith Into Daily Family Life (For Clergy Moms and Everyone)

There is a proverb in Spanish: “En la casa del herrero, cuchillo de palo.” It means “In the blacksmith’s house, a wooden knife.” In English we express the same idea when we say some variation of the proverb “The cobbler’s children are barefoot.” In Chinese: “The woman who sells fans uses her hands to fan […]

Job Hunting for the Two Career Couple: When the Right Call Is Not the Church

I sat on the bed, listening to the shower. At my feet there was a massive pile of laundry, mostly my husband’s clothes. He was packing a large suitcase and moving to the East coast for a job. For the second time in 12 months, we were going to be separated. When we first met, we were […]

When Worlds Collide

It felt like falling down a well. That’s the best way I can describe standing by the side of the cart in the back room of the funeral home, looking down at my sister in the body bag. The call had come after a long day in the church office of meetings, planning sessions, and […]

Gathering a Tribe

It didn’t start out as an intentional project.  I didn’t sit down one day and say, “I need a tribe”, and then set out to collect various individuals to gather around me as I moved through life.  It just sort of happened.  I read the book, Tribal Church: Ministering to the Missing Generation by Carol Howard Merritt, and saw myself […]

Changing Communities

Every time I bathe my one-year-old son, I think of baptism. Baptism leads my mind to community. Each time the water runs down his hair, I’m reminded of my changing community.  When I was finishing Seminary, we had to write a 30 Page “CREDO” statement of our beliefs as a culmination to our years of […]