My family is clamoring for attention. “Check this out for me, please?” “Before you go, can you just look at this...” “I need you for just a moment.” My mind can barely process the requests. They tumble one after the other in a hopeless pile of need. Somewhere in the middle of the tasks and to-do’s my brain finds a clear spot and time stands still: I need to go for a run. Fortunately, we’re staying at a large hotel…
[caption id="attachment_1632" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="No, this isn't Toby. But it sure looks like him!"][/caption] There are some phases of life that are all about cleaning up messes. Oh, they are beautiful phases -- make no mistake -- but they are so messy. Babies create nothing but messes, which is hard to understand since they can't even move around on their own power! Toddlers expand that mess-making to an artform. As the kids get older, their messes get, well, messier. Your…
God, forgive me for completely misunderstanding my purpose in life. Over and over again. Every day you set in front of me a choice: choose life or choose death. Which will you choose today? How many times I blow it, and choose second best. "I'd stop to drive her to the doctor, Lord, but I have some errands to run and she could call someone else." But maybe you need me in that car with her. Maybe, for today, that…
I couldn't sleep last night, and this is what I was pondering! Which is an odd glimpse into my strange mind, but never mind that right now. As regular readers of Coffee Shop Journal know, I am in a constant battle with my sense of "place." South Florida is a hard spot to be. Now before you rain-soaked, snow-weary northerners jump all over me, this is what I mean: South Florida residents are usually bent on pleasure. They've retired, they…
Today I'm welcoming my favorite guest blogger ever to Coffee Shop Journal! You get a chance to meet my daughter, Kylie, and read some of the words she's written that have moved me to laughter and tears...all in one paragraph. Usually I keep most of our "personal" life off this blog, choosing to share those things on Facebook or my other blog (rarely!). But last night I read a note that my oldest daughter wrote in response to a Facebook…
I have three posts lined up to write and I can't write any of them. It has been such a long and such a confusing day that there's no room for anything else. Yesterday I wrote about crying with others, and today I was given the opportunity to practice what I preach. There are days when I feel that my life is filled with the mundane tasks that serve no purpose, that ministry is what happens to other people. Not…
It doesn't take long sitting out there where life happens before you realize that the process of moving through this world can be painful. It rubs us raw. It's hard enough to bleed when it is our own wound we are processing, but the commitment to community means we bleed when the wound is not our own. We'll find ourselves crying when the pain is across the coffee cup. We read posts from the International Justice Mission and we feel…
