You’d Do the Same for Me
We’ve been invited to a church member’s home for a meal just three times in three years. As an accidental experiment in the Colorado city where we moved three years ago, we visited 17 churches, landing at 2 for about a year, 3 for a month each, and visited the others ... As faculty for a local university’s nursing program, I guide student nurses into the role of professional nurse. One of my greatest challenges is that today’s students are afraid to be seen as anything less than perfect—by their patients, their professors, ... I edged to the front of my folding chair, bobbing and weaving my head to find a view through the heads in front of me. “Do you have a child there?” an older woman sitting next to me asked with a slight accent as she ... Not long ago, I found myself walking with a small team of missionaries along the rubble-filled streets of Mathare, the second largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya, with a population of more than half-million people. We stepped over ditches filled with raw sewage and held ... Sankofa is a word from the Akan people of West Africa (primarily Ghana and the Ivory Coast). It is both a word in the Twi language and one of over a hundred Adinkra symbols used by the Ashanti people (one of many Akan subgroups). ... When my family and I moved back home to America from South Africa, we were not prepared for what would greet us upon our return. The dead of winter in Boston with its frigid temperatures, gray skies, and snow were the least of them. We also noticed that the social climate had changed. Yes, our family ... We couldn’t understand but a few words of the mass but the beautiful, flowing Arabic was music to our ears, rising up to the heavens along with the sweet-smelling incense. Not only was the language new to our ears, having only studied it for a couple months, but this was the first mass we’d ever ... “I don’t deserve him.” Just 10 days ago, I said these words, watching my youngest son pedal away on his red bike, thick brown arms looped through his favorite safety green backpack. “Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.” –William Faulkner
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“I don’t know if I can marry you,” I tell my boyfriend as we snuggle on the couch in his parents’ living room. “If I do, you have to promise to let me go to Africa, alone if I have to. I don’t know when, and I don’t know why. But I know God has a plan ... I write the word bittersweet on a white napkin, pushing it across the table toward our exchange student. His eyes absorb the word as he rolls it around on his tongue, his French accent ... Once again, it was Winnie and me behind the bake sale table, while all the real excitement of the annual plant sale swirled through adjacent rooms. Winnie is a whiz at organizing the diverse, nearly random donations from friends of the land trust. Arrayed around us on three cloth-covered tables ... When Momae moved up north to Massachusetts to join Daddy, she brought her most precious possessions stuffed inside my granddaddy’s big brown leather suitcase. She also brought recipes handed down from my Nana, some hastily scribbled on paper, and others committed to memory. Daddy was an ensign ... We were up so early that it was still dark outside. In typical Florida style, the sky was foggy and heavy with dampness. The drive to the airport in my 12-year-old mind was magical; we were setting off on an adventure and moving to Bermuda. This was new for me because though I was born there ...
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Hospitality: Entertaining or Healing?
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Hospitality Flipped Upside Down
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Hope, Resolve, and Leading with Grace
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Was Blind, but Now I See: My Sankofa Story
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Healing from Race-Based Trauma
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How Contagious Is Our Faith?
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On Letting Go
Waiting on Island Time
A Promise, a Prayer, and an Irresistible Smile
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Bittersweet
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A Cake, the Klan, a Senator’s Stand
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Momae’s Kitchen
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Bermuda Family Meals & Jesus
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