I don’t know what kind of world we are about to face. I have my fears and legitimate concerns, like many of the rest of you. At the same time, I know some of you feel like God has prevailed and all will now be well. I feel an obligation to offer words of wisdom...

One of the most alluring things about Christianity is the feeling of belonging, of being part of something bigger. Of knowing where you fit inside that insular bubble. Of knowing the answers to the fill-in-the-blank questions, knowing what verses to quote, knowing where to find things in the Bible. And one of the loneliest places...

  I wish everyone could travel and realize America is not the center of the universe. Not even close. Everyone should have the chance to feel ignorant. Slow. Dim-witted. Embarrassed. Not very smart. (After all, they’re multilingual and I’ve merely completed 300 days of Duolingo.) My feeble attempts to ask for a table in Italian...

If you read Praying Upside Down, you know that in 2007 my husband and I owned two houses for two years because we couldn’t sell the first one. In the process, I began praying for the woman, whoever she was, who would someday buy the house. Doing so opened my eyes to seeing answers to...

As many of you know, my dad was a professional watercolorist. He painted full-time for 45 years, and once he started painting, he never had another job. One of his favorite sayings, when people asked how long a painting took him, was “three hours and thirty years,” or eventually 40 and almost 50. In other...

  For my birthday in July, a friend bought me a really fun gift—a pocket watercolor set and a 3×5-ish watercolor sketch book. It’s adorable… but I was like, what on earth am I going to do with this?  When I attended the recent Midwest Writers Workshop, Kelcey Ervick, the author of a graphic memoir, taught on graphic novels (putting...