I was supposed to write a blog post about Oklahoma tonight. I tried, but the words didn’t come. I watched a dozen different videos about the tornado (this one is my favorite where an elderly lady finds her dog!), read others posts about the event, and tried all my usual tricks–coffee, dessert, prayer, music–to start [...]

I’ve spent most of my life feeling guilty for not doing more or being better, cooking like her or saving the homeless community like him. But the last two years for me have been about unwinding the guilt, the shame, the commitments that this week or this day will be different because I will do [...]

The sky turned black within seconds. We sat perched by the doorway of a muggy noodle shack, watching the tanned Asian faces stir the big steaming pots that rested on the floor. The storm was coming, my friend, “Small Moon”, told me and we weren’t going to make it home before it hit. So we continued [...]

How do you know if the guy you’re dating is ‘the One’? Will you “just know”? The scary part about marriage is most people make this decision of gargantuan proportion in love, which by definition means your mind is hazy from all the 3am make-outs and sheer thrill thinking no one has ever loved like [...]

Occasionally, I just need to make a list of things I love around the internet. Here goes! LOVE RUNS Remote 5k In lieu of presents and parties for her 30th birthday, my friend Ally Vesterfelt is raising $30,000 to build a classroom in Gulu, Uganda with Bob Goff and Restore International. Pretty amazing, right? This [...]

  I did something brave this year that honestly felt more courageous, more gutsy than writing any blog post or book, or even spilling my life-story in front of college students. My gutsy act? I invited people over for dinner. I read in Bread & Wine (a wonderful book that you just have to read) [...]

In college, I waited—like I thought every good Christian girl was supposed to. The Christian rhetoric of “men initiate, women respond” gridlocked my heart into eleven months of waiting. As the story often goes, I really liked this great guy. Our relationship escalated from group hangouts, to study breaks and late-night runs, and from there [...]

3 pounds. That’s all it took to send my thoughts into a tailspin. Two seconds with my feet planted on a scale was all it took for my entire day to feel ruined. You know the thoughts that started. I considered the wine, the candy, the burritos I’d had over the past week. I remembered [...]

  It’s been one heck of a week. From seeing the news of Boston all over Twitter on Monday, to checking to make sure my friends running were alive, to asking the questions we all did, and then later shuttering with the words ‘terrorism’ and ‘brothers’.  Seeing people who showed up for an iconic event [...]

“What should you say to a guy if he says: ‘I don’t like wearing a condom’? Text your reply.” The text was just one of many that popped up on my screen in what felt like the most unfortunate times—including at church on Easter Sunday—as I clutched my screen hoping those nearby couldn’t see the [...]