Idle and Blessed

I think partly I’m homesick. I miss my town. My places and my people, the hills and valleys and the landscape of Familiar. Really familiar. Like, simplistically meaningful. Unassuming and raw and quiet the way Tennessee is. I want that surrounding me again. And Jenny, who turns 24 tomorrow in Thailand, who won’t be home for years. The girl who has seen my soul unedited and loves me still. I’m homesick for her and the other people who grew me. Partly it’s this time of year. November. Two Novembers ago my heart was broken enough to re-chart my course and change my life. The way it gets dark early, the sun fleeing fast each day, like it’s not quite brave enough to stick around; the way the leaves all change colors and die so fast; the way my breath makes clouds when I run long miles…it all brings me back to a profound memory of trying to get out of bed every day, trying to ask God questions with no answers. It could also be the halfway point of my Master...

There are some things about this career path that are impossibly hard. How do I stand in front of 24 state prisoners and teach them medical ethics? They're the ones who really know about abortion, about a stage 4 cancer diagnosis, about losing their parents and kids. And how do I take this Bible I wrestle with and make sense of it? For my theology and my ethic and my world? How do I tell someone where my hope comes from, why I can say "death is not the enemy anymore?" How do I choose to uproot my life every 3 or 4 years and start a new degree? How about choose to really know people in those places I won't stay, those places I know I'll leave behind? I can put up walls and be safer but the heart of God is about risk and costly love and I promised to follow. How do I watch my professor battle disgrace for the sake of the gospel, and still choose to follow in his path? How do I continue to stand in the gap between what I used to believe and what has been re...

"I just wanna make a difference," she said. "I been in here a long time, you know, but I'm about to get out soon. There's a lot of things I want to do." She's tall and authoritative, even sitting down, and her brown eyes are serious. The others always listen when she talks, like she's a wise old woman, but she's probably only 30. She has a lot of opinions, is skeptical of most things, and she talks about suffering more than the others do. When we discussed abortion, she was the first to say a severely disabled child should be "aborted so it wouldn't have to suffer." When we talked about suicide, she didn't raise her hand before giving her opinion. "I just feel like if life is total suffering to someone, they should be allowed to stop it." Why wouldn't we stop suffering? She doesn't talk much about her own life but I see her old suffering, below the surface of her eyes. She takes care of the other women ...