On Prison and Hospice

Most of my time training to be a chaplain was spent working in hospice while participating in a peer reflection group each Thursday at the high security men’s prison in Stillwater. Half of the people in my peer group were incarcerated and half were not. This is the only CPE program in the country that operates this way–training incarcerated people and nonincarcerated people together. Those of us living outside prison worked in various community settings. Those living inside prison offered spiritual care as mental health mentors, de-escalating situations in the isolation unit, and in their cell blocks and restorative justice groups. READ MORE…

A Blessing for Michael on the Tenth Anniversary of his Suicide Attempt

Recently, I was asked to help craft a ritual honoring a writing partner and friend who tried to end his own life ten years ago. This is the blessing I wrote for the occasion.

Blessed are you, Michael. Blessed are you whose story was almost cut short. Ten Years ago, a part of you placed a period at the end of what you thought was the sentence of your life. But it turned out that that period was really a comma, a semincolon, an ellipsis… Read the full blessing

Gratitude as Survival Strategy

This fall, I have spent every Thursday in the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Stillwater. Upon arrival, five of us (chaplains and chaplains-in-training) walk through multiple metal gates that offer an ominous clanging echo each time they close behind us. In the chapel, the four “insiders” greet the five “outsiders.” We set up chairs and offer hand shakes (because hugs are not allowed). 

Together, these nine people form our clinical pastoral education (CPE) group, supporting one another as we practice spiritual care. READ MORE…

Living Resurrection

Four years ago, my heart stopped beating. For several minutes, I was “dead” — unconscious and receiving CPR. After receiving a shock defibrillation, I was alive again. Immediately following my heart attack, I experienced a resurrection of sorts. My resurrection was certainly not Jesus’ resurrection. But, I lived through the experience of being dead and then being alive again. Now, whenever I read a resurrection story, I am not only listening with my mind, I am also listening with the “ear of my heart” (my once-stopped, now-beating-again heart). Living through a heart attack has become a lens through which I read the Gospel stories of resurrection. READ MORE…

A Blessing for Writing

May you remain deeply connected with whatever is inside of you that most needs to be given voice.

May you shape words of candor and compassion in a world starving for the truth.

May the words you shape also shape you…into a truer version of yourself.

READ MORE…

Parenting Calculations

Confession: I find parenting really hard a lot of the time. I often wonder if I am temperamentally suited to be a parent. I am impatient. I get bored reading the same books again and again. I say this as someone who experienced years of infertility and really wanted to be a parent for a long time. I didn’t have many illusions that parenthood would be blissful, but I had the ratios off. In my mind, I guess I thought having kids would be at least 50% snuggling and game nights. Instead, much of my time as a parent is spent wiping butts, refereeing about whose turn it is, and nagging them to get their shoes on. READ MORE…

A Writing Meditation

Imagine your voice is an organ that resides in the center of your body, halfway between your heart and your gut. As you breathe into it, imagine the oxygen is reaching your voice, waking it up and nourishing it.

Your voice is the sacred center of your being; it is your soul’s spokesperson. No one else’ voice is exactly like yours. Your voice is your essence. It has the ability to just be, to listen, and to speak. Your voice is often quietly observing as it rides around in your body. Witnessing your life and preparing for the moments when it can speak. But it won’t speak just any old time. READ MORE…

Heart Day #4

Today is my Heart Day, the fourth anniversary of when my heart stopped beating temporarily. Every year, I get a little further from the acute feeling of almost dying. But the afterglow is still very much present because it’s not something you forget about or can unknow. It’s a strange thing to try to articulate, but in the moment that I almost died, I knew that I would be ok….I knew that the space/place you enter when you die is peaceful and accepting. But some mysterious reason (that I don’t know and you don’t know–although some people think they know)–it wasn’t yet time for me to go there. And the gratitude for that reality mostly comes in the form of little moments that I so easily could have missed. READ MORE…

Learning to Swim by Swimming

When I turned 30, I decided that I wanted to complete a triathlon. One problem: I did not know how to swim. I wasn’t scared of the water and I could stay afloat, but the most fruitful results of my childhood swim lessons were a goofy-looking breast stroke that didn’t involve putting my head under the water and a “little bird, big bird, fly.” The latter was basically laying on my back, flapping my arms, and propelling myself (slowly) through the water. These were not the ways of a triathlete. READ MORE…

An Uncomfortable Lesson in Hospitality

Several years ago, I learned an uncomfortable lesson about hospitality. I was working in a congregation-based shelter for families experiencing homelessness in St. Paul. Because the 55 beds that Ramsey County had in its shelter were always full, congregations acted as “overflow shelters,” housing up to 20 people each night. Each month a different congregation would host and staff the shelter in their building. In the evening, families (mostly women and children) would arrive via taxi. Volunteers from the congregation would serve food, help kids with homework or organize activities. The families slept on cots, usually in one large room with very little privacy. In the morning, everyone packed up their belongings and took taxis back downtown. READ MORE…

Easter is a Season (Not a Day)

This Easter, it felt nearly sacrilegious to celebrate resurrection while so much dying is happening all around us. Even with vaccination rates rising, we continue to lose people daily to COVID-19. As I write, 2,996,305 people have died from this disease, 562,296 of them in the United States. Losing that many people is difficult to comprehend, and even more difficult to honor properly. I lost my mother-in-law my step-brother, and my uncle this year, and like many others, we have not yet gathered for a funeral to honor their lives. My grief feels suspended, like the grief itself still lives in quarantine.  READ MORE…

A Letter to My Five Years Ago Self

The past five years have been the most painful, challenging, change-filled years of my life. In that span, my mother died suddenly, I nearly died from a heart attack, and my spouse (Tim) and I assumed many care-giving duties for my in-laws as they have both struggled with dementia. Tim and I both changed jobs, we moved into a new home, and we moved Tim’s parents three times. And, after many years of infertility, I gave birth to two children. READ MORE…

In Honor of Infertility Awareness Week

It’s national infertility awareness week (which I actually just recently learned about). I spent many years yearning to have children and experiencing the hope/grief cycle of infertility and miscarriage. During that time, I spoke to few people about the grief and the challenges to my sense of control over my body and my life direction. Part of the reason I spoke about it so rarely is that well-intentioned people spoke about God’s will in a ways that made me want to scream. Other well-intentioned people warned me against how hard fertility drugs could be on your body. Also not helpful. READ MORE…