-
This Could Be Good
(Originally published at ALifeOverseas.com, on May 22, 2025.) It’s our turn: our family is transitioning back to our home country in the next two months, and I find myself looking for success stories. Or at least transition stories that have threads of hope. There are a great many stories about how difficult, traumatic, and disorienting…
-
Lent and Longing
When we anticipated Lent this year, I felt hopeful – maybe an odd emotion for the season, but we were in the throes of late summer. As for our family, we live nearly at the bottom of the African continent, and our mornings were just beginning to start later, with a chilly air, prompting my…
-
Facing the Brokenness
On our way home from town last weekend, we passed a familiar sight: a man digging through a bag of trash, someone else’s trash. And my heart broke. I’m still so affected by this, I thought, having lived in our African town for nearly eight years. My next thought followed instantaneously, Lord, please don’t ever…
-
On Wrestling with Time
My oldest walked out of our family room to join us at the dinner table, and said, “Oh, I don’t think this was supposed to be left on the stove.” Our eyes all went to the stringy, melted mess of plastic she was holding; it was a Fisher Price kitchen pot from my childhood days.…
-
We Were Happy Once
“Write… we were happy once.” In the Little Women BBC miniseries, Mr. March tenderly looks into Jo’s eyes, those eyes filled with pain and despair and tears. How do I go on? those eyes plead, searching her father’s face for wisdom, guidance, help of any kind. We were happy once. These words echo in my…
-
What the Psalms Have Taught Me About Safety
In the summer of 2008, I spent two months in Pakistan. My time was focused on discipleship, through training teachers at a local Christian girls’ school in English and leading Bible studies among nurses at a local hospital, primarily. When I first arrived on a muggy Sunday morning and was retrieved by the airport by…
bethbarthelemy.com 