I keep hearing people talk about things “going back to normal” soon. Spoiler alert: I don’t think we’re going to back to normal. I...

Re-entry is hard, in many ways even harder than living overseas. In re-entry, you are trying to sort out a massive change in identity,...

One way I’ve been dealing with my re-entry shock and our isolation is by experimenting with cooking Chinese food. I didn’t cook Chinese...

A couple of years ago, I arrived back in Beijing on about March 17. A few days later, I noticed that the lilac bushes in my apartment...

In my first class for my middle school students, I showed the students these two photos. I asked them which one they would choose if...

A couple weeks ago, I read “Never the Stranger” by Kate Kooyman on The Twelve blog about not just offering, but receiving hospitality. ...

I woke up early on Christmas morning. It wasn’t because I was excited to open gifts or see my family. I woke up early out of an intense...

When I was going through the hard time I wrote about a few weeks ago–which felt a bit like a long season of Advent waiting–one of the...

“Every lament is a love-song.” –Nick Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, pg. 6 I’ve been crying a lot in the last few days.  Its a little...

This post is a reflection on what living in China is teaching me about Lent—the six weeks when the church remembers the suffering and...

A year ago, encouraged by Velvet Ashes, I picked a word for 2015.  I honestly wasn’t completely sold on picking one word, so I didn’t...

Today, 50 days after Easter, the church celebrates Pentecost.  We remember God sending the Holy Spirit to the disciples, the beginnings...

Faithful God, I’m waiting, wondering, hoping, working. When life seems foggy, and I can’t se through the haze, Help me to wait hopefully,...