Today will be a short one, as I come down from a weekend spent completing the first draft of When Women Sing: Psalms of Women Singing the World Anew.

My third book.

I now know that when I send the draft to my editor on Tuesday—though it is still a long way from being done—it is closer than it once was. Hitting send on that email will be a prayer:

Go now, and become better, stronger, truer.

Let the editing process begin.

And so, as I often do, I’m offering a prayer. For my third book, and perhaps for any of us who desire stronger, truer, better things in our lives and in this world:

May you trust that you are enough.

May you know that editing is not about changing as much as it is about strengthening.

And may you remember that strengthening is about becoming the most honest and true version of yourself you can be.

May you know that you are beautiful because you are true.

And may you know that you are true because you are beautiful.

Thank you for showing me what it means to sing with the women.

Thank you for being a place where women’s voices can sing.

Now, be brave, strong sister.

Be bold.

Be you.

Amen.

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Much has been said about the differences between raising a boy and raising a girl. But I have found that focusing on individual qualities can be far more meaningful than relying on broad assumptions about gender.

The great Gloria Steinem said, “We must begin to raise our daughters like we raise our sons, and our sons like we raise our daughters,” asking us to reflect on how we shape our children’s lives.

I think about this often.

Once, on the sidelines of a soccer game, another parent said, “Boys are so wild,” and I just smiled, thinking, Have you met my daughter?

Because in our family, at least, our son is the much calmer, lower-energy, wants-to-sleep-all-the-time kid. Our daughter, on the other hand, is high-energy, big-impact, bold-moves-all-the-time.

Our son waited to walk until he was fourteen months old; our daughter was walking at ten months.

I bring my kids up as examples because our lived experiences matter. They complicate the easy stories we tell ourselves about who children are supposed to be.

It’s not that saying “Boys are so wild” is necessarily incorrect. It’s that it’s incomplete.

The more accurate statement might be, “My boys are so wild.”

That small shift—from the general to the particular—allows us to see individual differences. It reminds us that children are not categories. They are people.

And after all, to say that any one group of people is all one thing or another has been getting us into terrible trouble for centuries now.

Which brings me back to Gloria Steinem.

Her call to raise our sons like our daughters and our daughters like our sons isn’t about pretending boys and girls are identical. It is about questioning the scripts we hand them before they have had the chance to discover themselves.

If we raise our boys to be physically strong, emotionally intolerant, and desirous of control while raising our daughters to be meek, mild, and people-pleasing—as so many sons and daughters have been raised in the past—we risk perpetuating the idea that men should be our emotionally impenetrable leaders and women should be our quiet handmaids.

But what if we flipped the script?

What if we taught all of our children that strength and tenderness belong together? What if we showed them that leadership requires deep listening? What if we demonstrated that vulnerability can be a superpower and that caring for others is not a feminine trait, in the same way that boldness is not a masculine one?

What if, instead of raising children according to gender constructs, we paid attention to the actual children entrusted to us?

Because children, like all of us, are particular. And parenting, at its best, is the holy practice of paying attention.

I offer these thoughts today because it is my son’s eleventh birthday.

When I found out we were having a boy in late 2014, I had a lot of feelings about it. I wondered about bringing another white boy into a world so routinely shaped by white boys. I wondered what kind of man he would become and whether my husband and I would be up to the task of raising him differently.

Turns out, the answer was yes.

Not because we are incredibly wise or the best parents in the world.

But because we are intentional. And because we are the best parents in the world for our son. For this particular boy.

The one who took his sweet time learning to walk. The one whose happy place is his bed with a good book. The one whose energy is quieter than his sister’s but whose presence remains no less powerful for being calm. The one who has taught me that children are not blank slates upon which we write our hopes and dreams, nor are they categories into which we sort them.

Instead, children are mysteries, prayers that unfold like blankets upon us, gifts that open themselves in time.

And part of our work as parents is learning to see them clearly enough to recognize who they are becoming.

Here, parenting becomes spiritual formation.

Spiritual formation doesn’t come by going to church every Sunday, as if a destination down the street or across town can make us whole. It comes by showing up with the people entrusted to our care, even and especially when it is hard, uncomfortable, boring, frustrating, and exhausting.

We are formed (or, at least, can be) by the fires of the everyday relationships we engage in, the mornings when someone takes their sweet time getting ready and almost makes us late for school and work, the arguments and the apologies, the challenges to all the things we thought we knew.

Formation comes when I loosen my grip on the child I imagined and make room for who they actually are.

We think we form our children. But, in truth, they form us.

Even on the hardest days, I believe my son and I were made for each other. That God, Universe, Love, Spirit knew what They were doing when They led us to one another.

And eleven years into this particular journey, I am still learning him, still discovering him, still being surprised by him, still being formed by him.

So today, on his eleventh birthday, I am less interested in celebrating that we have raised our son “differently” than I am in celebrating the boy he is.

He reminds me that there isn’t only one way to be a boy, nor is there one way to be a girl. His very presence proclaims: We contain multitudes, Mama. Isn’t it grand?

To be trusted with the becoming of another person while I, too, am still becoming is a gift, a dream, and a prayer.

I get to learn, even as I am learning. I get to hope for another even as I hope for myself. And I get to pray for us both—that we might know we are loved by Love forever and a day (as my grandmothers would say).

I am being changed, formed, molded, and made by a child I thought I was here to raise, but who, it turns out, is also here to raise me.

Happy birthday, sweet boy. What a gift it is to get to know the fullness and beauty of you.

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Do you remember the Prayer List at church?

Any of us who grew up going to church every Sunday morning and night and every Wednesday evening knows what I’m talking about.

We had something at my childhood church called “Prayer Meeting,” where the adults would go to name the prayers they were praying out loud, with their community. Then, those prayers were added to a list. The list was printed in the church newsletter and Sunday morning bulletin, as well as shared among Sunday school classes and Bible study groups.

At the Prayer Meeting you’d hear about Frank’s cancer and Sharon’s son’s divorce and Christina’s upcoming surgery.

As an adult, I’ve continued to attend congregations that, though they are much more progressive theologically than the church of my youth, still uphold the tradition of prayer meetings. In fact, the church we attend now conducts its Prayers of the People in a similar way ON SUNDAY MORNING. IN WORSHIP.

The first time I experienced the Prayers of the People this way, I was a bit thrown. In more recent years, I’ve become accustomed to Prayers of the People being offered more poetically from the pastor. There might be moments of silence held for personal prayers, sure, but it’s not like the free-for-all, unfiltered invitation to openly share what’s on your heart, mind, and soul.

While I’m clearly uncomfortable with these open, spontaneous prayer times because hearing intimate, personal details about people I do not know have given the permission for others to share about them makes me nervous, I’ve come to appreciate the old-fashioned prayer meeting of my youth in new ways.

After all, I’m pretty sure this is one of the primary functions of the church.

To gather, to hold one another’s heartache and hope, and to pray.

So, today, I invite us to a prayer meeting.

I won’t share people’s names or intimate details of their lives (I’m still staunchly against this practice), but I will share with you what I’m currently praying about and who I’m currently praying for as an invitation for you to do the same.

Of course, you can share your prayers here, in the comments, but I also encourage you to share them with your community.

The world doesn’t need more protective, closed-off people. It needs those of us willing to be vulnerable, ask for what we want and need, and trust that whether we get it or not, Love holds us—and everybody else, too.

So, without further ado, let us pray.

For my friend going through a divorce who’s grieving a life they thought they’d always have…

For guns to be eradicated…

For my third book that is due to my publisher on September 1…

For women’s rage to be validated, supported, and channeled toward transformation…

For Talarico to win the Senate race in Texas…

For my children, as they navigate school and sports and learning how to be human in this wild world…

For my dad’s health and celebrating that he’s well enough to travel…

For certain systems and the people who uphold them to die…

I don’t pray because I think my prayers will somehow change the outcome of a certain situation.

God knows I’m not that powerful.

I pray because people ask me to.

I pray because I ask others to pray for me.

I pray because it keeps me soft in a world that wants me to be hard.

I pray because I’m okay not knowing what prayer does or how my prayers affect God (or not).

I pray because my hope is that the prayers begin with words and end with actions.

Loving ones. Liberating ones. Levitating ones.

This week, and all weeks, join me in making a prayer list.

Invite others to your prayer meeting.

It just may be that our childhood church communities were on to something. And that we can continue the practice of bearing one another’s burdens in love and celebrating one another’s joys in peace by asking for prayer when we need it, praying for others when they ask for it, and trusting that those prayers will lead us where God is and where God wants us to be.

May it ever be so.

Amen.

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Introduction

The first day of Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) is this coming Tuesday, August 11. This year, I not only work for a nonprofit that is the philanthropic arm of MNPS and have children starting the first and fifth grades, I’m also the PTO President at the kids’ school.

I stepped into the role of President with eyes and heart wide open. Not only is it the last year our kids will be at the same school, I also believe deeply in supporting public education for all kids. So, to have the opportunity to make the small corner of the world that is our kids’ (and so many other kids’) school a little better and brighter feels like a gift. Because it is.

Most years, I write a Prayer for the First Day of School, even if only in my heart. I commit to praying it as I drive across town, passing many different schools on my route. In all the years I’ve been praying and in all the prayers I’ve prayed, the most consistent line is this: You are a beloved child of God.

Oh, how I wish I could take every child’s face in my hands, look them in the eyes, and tell them this. Oh, how I wish they’d believe it.

Which is its own prayer that I pray for all of us—child, adult, somebody, somewhere in between.

So, whether it’s your first day of school ever or your school days are long gone, here’s my Prayer for the First Day of School 2026, which is not just for some of us but for all of us. May it ever be so.

You are a beloved child of God. 
You are a descendant of Love. 
You are the result of the creativity 
     of thousands. 

It’s okay to cry. 
Your laughter is holy. 
Gentleness and humility are signs
     of strength. 

You will learn how to read. 
And write. Add and subtract. 
Learn, too, how to be kind to yourself
     and others. 

You will be with people you like. 
You will be with people you don’t like. 
Everyone is worthy of respect, and 
     setting boundaries is one of respect’s most important forms. 

Your body is perfect just the way it is.
Ask for help when you need it. 
Take a deep breath. Place a hand on your heart, 
     say, “You got this, child.” (Because you do.)  

Look up at the stars and the moon. 
Let them wrap you in a blanket of compassion. 
You are never alone
     no matter how alone you may feel. 

Share your lunch.
Sit next to the kid who smells different. 
Invite the quiet one sitting in the corner 
   to play. 

Remember, you’re only as smart
     as you are willing to love. 

You are a beloved child of God. 
You are a descendant of Love. 
So is everyone else. Amen. 

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Adam (my husband) and I celebrated our sixteenth wedding anniversary on Friday with a kiss in the morning and a shared pizza that evening, after Adam handled parenting duties and I worked a back-to-school event for teachers hosted by the nonprofit where I work.

We’ve celebrated our marriage and relationship in many different ways throughout the years, but this year felt most aligned with the reality of our middle-aged lives, which tends to be one big logistics calendar.

Romantic, right?

The myth that marriage is sustained by sexual chemistry or constant romance is, well, just that—a myth.

In contrast, the marriages I know that last (and last with love, respect, and kindness) are the ones sustained by ordinary, quiet practices of love: making sure your partner’s coffee is in the cabinet, ready for them to make early the next morning; allowing each other space to read and be alone; picking up your partner’s favorite dessert on the way home from work; taking out the trash without asking; reminding the kids why you love the other one so much.

Coffee. Alone time. Taking out the trash.

Not exactly what Disney fairy tales are made of...but they tend to be what feels the most like home (and love) to me.

It’s a good thing romance isn’t something we vowed to each other sixteen years ago...and it’s certainly not something I’d vow now.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a romantic at heart. I love love.

And, as I’ve aged and lived with the same person for many years now, romance and love have come to mean much more about humor, presence, and dedication than fancy dinners and expensive hotel rooms.

Today, I’m thinking about the wedding vows I’d say now that perhaps I couldn’t—or wouldn’t—have said then.

Couldn’t because there’s only so much you can know at the beginning of your lives together. There’s no way of knowing whose parent will get sick (and when), what kind of pregnancies you will have (or not), how much money you’ll make (or how little).

Wouldn’t because there are things you will only say after living longer and learning that love is less about certainty than it is about returning to one another, again and again.

When I’ve offered premarital coaching to couples I’m marrying (as their officiant), I encourage them to revisit their wedding vows from time to time.

Do these vows still make sense for us? I encourage them to ask.

Is there anything we want to add? Anything we need to revise or take away?

So, as a forty-four-year-old woman married to the same man for the past sixteen years, a man with whom I share two children, a home, two cars, two dogs, and many other things, including love—here’s what I’d promise today:

In the name of Love,

I welcome you as my life partner.

I promise to be honest with you.

I promise to laugh with you.

I promise to grow with you.

And when it gets really hard,

when we’re tired and beat down

by the realities of middle age,

late-stage capitalism,

and caretaking,

I promise to be gentle with you

and with myself.

I promise to love who you are right now.

I promise to love who you will one day be.

Today and tomorrow,

as long as love continues to grow here,

I will be by your side.

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I returned to Poustinia again this weekend—the little writing cottage where I’ve been spending time with the Psalms as I work on my third book.

While I was there, I jotted down a few things writing about the Psalms is teaching me, and I wanted to share them with you.

• Compassion is the answer.

• Praying is important.

• Poetry is essential.

• Grief is sacred.

• Justice is healing, or it’s not justice.

• If there has to be a winner, let it be Love.

• The women save us.

I could explain each of these. I could tell you exactly what I think I mean.

Or I could let them hang in the air like oxygen, not only for you, but for me, too.

I could resist the urge to explain and simply allow what I’m learning to unfold like a good story.

Because the truth is, I don’t know exactly what they mean. Not yet.

I’m still learning.

And I think that’s the point.

To get away, if we can, to a place that invites us to be quiet. To sit still. To move. To breathe. To ask the Holy:

What did you say then that you are also saying now?

Then, to listen.

We need not understand everything that comes to us. We need only trust that what comes is worth listening to, and, in time, worth understanding.

Here’s to the unfolding of a really good story.

And here’s to what writing about the Psalms is teaching me.

What’s teaching you right now?

With love,

Claire

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Recently, I was at happy hour with a few friends.

We were doing what friends do: talking about our jobs, career paths, families, and the strange, winding lives we’ve all somehow found ourselves living. No one was trying to fix anyone else’s problems, much less the world’s. We were simply enjoying sushi rolls and cocktails while listening honestly to one another.

At one point, one friend mentioned the possibility of taking on a new role. Another friend—who had recently stepped into what could only be described as the job opportunity of her life—sat quietly, listening.

After a pause, she said, almost offhandedly:

“Nothing that is for you will pass you by.”

Wait.

Say that again.

Nothing that is for you will pass you by.

It was as if a truth had fallen from heaven, landed squarely on our table, and announced, Hi. I’m here to stay.

Silence settled over us like a blanket.

Then someone finally whispered, “Wow. Isn’t that the truth?”

—

Since that evening, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about those words.

Nothing that is for you will pass you by.

I believe they’re true.

And yet, I also know they’re the kind of truth that can stir grief as much as comfort.

Years ago, when we were trying to get pregnant with our second child, I was diagnosed with secondary infertility.

All I wanted was to be pregnant.

All I kept getting was a monthly reminder that I wasn’t.

If someone had looked me in the eyes during that season and said, Nothing that is for you will pass you by, I might have wanted to punch them in the face.

I was terrified I would never be pregnant again.

Terrified that perhaps I wasn’t meant to have a second child.

Sometimes that fear felt like it was suffocating me.

And yet...

In my truest moments, in those quiet places where surrender feels less like giving up and more like falling into the Holy’s hands, I believed.

Nothing that was for me would pass me by.

And if the daughter I prayed for never arrived, somehow, some way, I believed I would eventually make peace with that reality.

Not on my own.

Not without enormous waves of grief.

But a hard-earned peace.

The kind that doesn’t arrive wrapped in pretty paper or tied with a satin bow.

The kind born in pools of tears, used tissues, swollen eyes, and a snotty nose.

The kind that costs something.

While I still have a long way to go in the trust department, I’ve come a long way, too.

Now, when I don’t get the job I interviewed for, when a publisher says no, or when the endorser I’m convinced will love my writing never writes back, I’m more likely to receive it, grieve it, and move forward.

I’m more willing to spend my energy on what is right in front of me.

On loving the here. The now.

Look, I know wanting another child and wanting a publisher to respond aren’t the same thing.

Some losses alter the architecture of your life.

Others simply bruise your ego.

But underneath both is the same invitation.

To loosen my grip.

To trust that what is mine cannot be stolen by timing, competition, rejection, or someone else’s success.

To believe that nothing meant for me will pass me by.

There have been seasons when I hated that idea.

When I wanted certainty instead of trust. Control instead of surrender. Guarantees instead of faith.

But my dislike has never changed reality. It has only made surrender more difficult.

Maybe that’s what I’m trying to say. Maybe our work isn’t to stop longing.

Maybe our work is to let ourselves desire deeply—to want, to dream, to pray, to risk our hearts—even knowing some of those desires may never materialize.

Maybe the invitation is to loosen our fear of grief instead of spending our lives trying to outrun it.

Because grief isn’t proof that we’ve failed. It’s proof that we’ve loved.

And maybe, day after day, we kneel at the altar of letting go and letting God. Not once. But every single day.

Until surrender becomes less like resignation and more like freedom.

Until we become the kind of people willing to follow the Divine Mother wherever she leads…

into the unknown,

into the wild,

into lives that are deeply, courageously,

divinely free.

Because perhaps that’s the deepest truth of all:

Nothing that is for you will pass you by.

And neither will the grace you’ll need to receive whatever comes instead.

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I’ve read a lot of theology.

I have shelves full of books written by people with advanced degrees, ancient languages, and carefully constructed arguments about the nature of God.

And then I have my children.

They’re my favorite theologians. Because they’re not talking about God; instead, they’re embodying Her.

Recently, Liv (our 6-almost-7-year-old) found a blank stretch of wall in our living room.

She walked over with several coloring pages she’d made, found some tape, and created what she considered an art gallery.

When she was younger, she called these “art exhibitions.”

She would gather random treasures—a pinecone, a toy figurine, three mismatched rocks, a ribbon she’d found on the floor—and arrange them carefully on a bookshelf or windowsill. Then she’d proudly invite everyone to come see her exhibition.

Now, she’s simply graduated from shelves to walls.

The surprising thing is that I haven’t taken the pictures down.

Every time I walk through the living room, I smile.

Not because they match the décor. Not because they’re hung straight. Not because they improve the aesthetic.

I smile because they remind me that my daughter believes this house belongs to her.

Somewhere along the way, she got the wild idea that she has permission to make beauty here.

Oh, wait.

She does.

It’s her home too.

See, the coloring pages do more than decorate the living room wall.

They disciple me.

Every time I see them, they whisper the same lesson:

Claire, chill out.

And then, just to make sure I hear it:

Chill out some more.

What a gift to have a daughter who creates because she can’t help herself. What a gift that she feels safe enough to share what she’s made.

Maybe this is how God sees us.

Maybe we were created to create.

Maybe Earth is less like a museum we’re afraid to touch and more like a family home where the Divine delights in watching us tape our imperfect masterpieces to the walls.

Maybe God isn’t nearly as concerned with perfect symmetry as I am.

Maybe mercy looks like making room for one another’s creativity.

A few days later, I learned something else from my kids.

We were all gathered around my brother’s dining room table in Texas—my parents, my brother’s family, my kids, all of us together after dinner, playing the question game, which is exactly what it sounds like it is.

Each of us asks a question, and everyone answers it.

Liv asked:

Who or what are you most proud of this year?

When it came to Wade (our 10-almost-11-year-old), he didn’t hesitate.

“My mom,” he said, “for releasing her second book and now working on her third.”

Then he looked at my dad.

“And my Papa for facing his sickness every day and coming through it.”

My dad was sitting beside me.

Without saying anything, we reached for each other’s hand.

We looked at one another, and our eyes filled with tears.

Then we looked around the table.

Not a single dry eye.

Children have a way of saying what adults too often leave unsaid.

We think it.

We feel it.

But we save it for eulogies. Or retirement parties. Or milestone birthdays.

Meanwhile, our hearts crave words that could have been spoken over an ordinary family dinner.

I’ve been thinking ever since about how often God says exactly this: I’m proud of you.

Not necessarily in words.

But in the language creation has always spoken.

Every sunrise. Every sunset. Every summer rain. Every purple wildflower blooming in a field in the middle of nowhere Texas or Tennessee.

I love you.

I’m proud of you.

I’m so glad you’re here.

Creation itself feels like one long blessing spoken over the world.

It seems, then, that children are among God’s best messengers. We’ve been told this since time immemorial.

A child will lead you.

Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them. For the kin-dom of heaven belongs to such as these.

Perhaps children are among God’s best messengers because they haven’t yet learned to hide what matters most.

They create because creating is joyful. They speak love because love is meant to be spoken. They claim space because they trust they’re welcome.

The older I get, the more I realize that it’s not about becoming less childlike, but more. That it’s about remembering what our youth seem to know instinctively.

That beauty is meant to be shared. That pride should be spoken aloud. That home is a place where love makes room for taped-up artwork.

And maybe God has been trying to teach us these things all along.

Sometimes through sunsets.

Sometimes through Scripture.

And sometimes through a six-year-old with a roll of Scotch tape and a ten-year-old brave enough to tell the people he loves exactly how proud he is of them.

If we’re wise enough to pay attention, our children may be the theologians we need most.

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I took a photo of a single sentence from my Emily Henry “beach read” while poolside on vacation this week.

The same universe that dispassionately takes things away can bring you things you weren’t imaginative enough to dream up.

—Funny Story by Emily Henry

I closed the book and stared at the water for a long time.

I wanted to argue with the sentence.

I don’t believe the universe is merely dispassionate. I don’t believe every gift arrives as compensation for a loss. And I have spent too much time with grieving people—myself among them—to believe suffering simply clears space for something better.

But there was another part of the sentence I couldn’t shake.

You weren’t imaginative enough to dream it up.

When I was young, I dreamed of getting married and having children. It’s what girls were taught to dream about in my West Texas, Southern Baptist world. You went to college not so much to be educated or transformed, but to find a husband.

You can imagine, then, my disappointment—and, if I’m honest, my shame—when I graduated without one. I didn’t even have a boyfriend. As deeply feminist as I was becoming, it was still difficult to untangle myself from the stories that had been woven into me during my most formative years.

Eventually, though, I decided to live my life as though it belonged to me.

I simply kept saying yes. Then another yes. Then another.

The yeses didn’t always make sense. They certainly didn’t follow the path of least resistance. But they were mine.

This week, watching my children splash in the pool while my husband floated nearby under the hot Mexican sun, I found myself smiling at the sentence I photographed.

Because the truth is, I couldn’t have imagined this life.

Not because it’s perfect. But because nineteen-year-old Claire didn’t have the imagination for it.

She couldn’t have imagined marrying someone who delights in strong women, who pursues justice with conviction and humor, whose kindness is somehow steadier than certainty. She couldn’t have imagined these two children who once grew inside my body and now ask questions that stop me in my tracks.

“I lived inside you?” my daughter asks with wide-eyed wonder.

“You were cut open for me?” my son says, still trying to make sense of the story of his birth.

She couldn't have imagined these gifts because our imaginations are never enough on their own. They need Love to stretch them. They need community to hold them. They need grace to whisper that there is more than what we can presently see.

This is what I keep returning to.

Not that suffering is secretly a gift.

Not that every loss has a tidy purpose.

But that our imaginations require something greater than ourselves to imagine the lives waiting to unfold.

The dreams we inherit are never entirely our own. They’re shaped by our families, churches, cultures, fears, and longings. Some deserve to be cherished. Others need to be questioned. Still others need to be released altogether. And some, blessedly and mercifully, are the ones we get to live like the precious gifts that they are.

Maybe growing up is less about achieving “the dream” than it is about expanding our imaginations.

Learning to believe that love can arrive in forms we didn’t know to ask for.

That vocation can surprise us.

That joy can interrupt us.

That grace often shows up looking nothing like the future we tried to plan.

Maybe that’s why I photographed that sentence.

Not because I agreed with every word.

But because it reminded me that there is something profoundly hopeful about admitting the limits of our own imagination.

If I could have perfectly imagined my future at nineteen, it probably wouldn’t have been big enough.

And perhaps that’s one of life’s quiet mercies: the most beautiful chapters are often the ones we never would have thought to write ourselves.

They are the ones written with Love.

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I grew up mowing yards as one of my spring and summer jobs.

Every Saturday morning from April through September, from the age of thirteen until I left for college, I’d help my dad or brother load the lawn mower and weed eater into the back of our blue-and-white pickup truck. We’d make our rounds across town, mowing yard after yard beneath the relentless West Texas sun.

Even in a place as hot and dry as West Texas, the grass kept growing.

I was happiest behind the lawn mower while Dad and my brother handled the edging and weed eating.

“It’s a great way to work on my tan,” I’d tell my friends when they wondered why I liked the job so much.

It was also a good way to make money.

But mostly, I loved the simplicity of it.

These days, my life revolves around strategic plans, calendars, budgets, interviews, meetings, and an inbox that never seems to empty. More often than I’d like to admit, I find myself longing for a day devoted entirely to yard work.

Sweat soaking my shirt.

Gallons of water offering brief relief.

A few hours of honest labor ending with the quiet satisfaction of a job completed.

No screens. No calendar. No decisions that follow me into the night.

Just presence. Movement. Muscles.

And grass.

So often I forget that the grass keeps growing whether I notice it or not.

Whether I marvel at it.

Whether I dare place my bare feet upon it, holy ground that it is.

The grass grows because that is what living things do. It’s what we do.

I forget that slowness has always been a companion to growth.

That mercy often arrives as a pause.

That grace is less an achievement than an invitation.

The world keeps trying to convince us that significance is loud. Creation has always whispered.

Halfway through the year, maybe the invitation isn’t to accomplish more, but to listen more carefully. To turn down the noise. To close the laptop. To pay attention to what I crave, and, perhaps, to what has been quietly craving me.

Mercy calls to mercy.

Deep summons deep.

Steadiness bids steadiness.

Love beckons love.

If I can become still enough, quiet enough, perhaps even sweaty and thirsty and tired enough, I just might hear that steady voice inviting me home.

Maybe this is the holy work.

Watching the grass grow.

Mowing it when it gets too high.

Standing barefoot in creation long enough to remember that I belong here.

Can you hear the whisper?

Or has the noise become too loud?

Either way, I understand.

I’ll be here beside you, learning again to hunger for both a good tan and, even more, a quiet, merciful life.

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I want to write about the World Cup today.

I want to write about the World Cup today because it’s all my family and I have been anticipating, watching, and talking about for the past several weeks. Apparently, it’s all the world has been anticipating, watching, and talking about, too.

At the beginning of June, my husband’s birthday was World Cup-themed, complete with plates, cups, banners, water bottles, and t-shirts. Now we’re eagerly awaiting the arrival of the jerseys we ordered: Scotland for my daughter and me (because, well, McKeever, and because we liked the color), Brazil for my son, and England for my husband.

But I don’t want to write about the World Cup simply because my family is obsessed with it.

I want to write about the World Cup because there’s something holy about it. Something church-like. Something potentially transformative, if we’re paying enough attention.

My friend Lisa Yebuah described it in a text the other night as “the thin veil” between this world and the one beyond.

She’s right.

Because when Ghana takes the pitch against England, or Haiti faces Brazil, there is much more than soccer at play.

There are histories. Ancestors. Empires. Resistance movements. Memories. Dreams.

There is grief and joy. Colonization and liberation. Loss and survival.

Ghana, a West African nation once colonized by England, will meet its former colonizer on the world’s biggest stage. To some, it may look like eleven players versus eleven players. But if you’re paying attention, the ancestors are nearby. Dancing. Singing. Bearing witness.

Because there is no such thing as being alone when it comes to love.

This is not to say Ghana will win, though wouldn’t that be delightful?

It is to say that the World Cup offers us more than a game if we’re willing to see it.

The same is true of Haiti and Brazil.

The relationship between these two nations carries profound symbolic weight. Haiti, of course, became the world’s first free Black republic in 1804 after overthrowing French colonial rule and defeating one of the most powerful empires on earth. At a time when millions throughout the Americas remained enslaved, Haiti became a beacon of Black freedom and self-determination.

Brazil, meanwhile, is home to the largest population of people of African descent outside of Africa. It is also the last nation in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery, finally doing so in 1888.

When Haiti and Brazil meet on a soccer field, they bring those histories with them.

Not as burdens. As witnesses.As reminders that the stories we inherit continue to shape the worlds we create.

And then there are the women.

Tori Penso, Brooke Mayo, and Kathryn Nesbitt recently made history as the first all-American, all-woman officiating crew to take charge of a men’s FIFA World Cup match.

Yes, it’s 2026, and we’re still celebrating firsts that should have happened long ago.

Still, I celebrate them.

I celebrate their presence. Their expertise. Their resilience. Their refusal to disappear.

Because in a world still structured by patriarchy and white supremacy, every woman who steps onto a stage that was never built for her expands the realm of what is possible.

That, too, is the thin veil.

Those moments when another world becomes visible, a world where the colonized are no longer colonized, where women are no longer second-class citizens, where the African diaspora flourishes, where dignity is not rationed, where belonging is not earned, where liberation is everyone’s inheritance.

The World Cup does not create that world, but sometimes it lets us glimpse it.

Sometimes, for ninety minutes, we can see beyond the boundaries we’ve been taught are permanent, and we can imagine a larger human story.

A beloved community.

And that is why I wanted to write about the World Cup today.

Because even when colonizing nations still dominate the global stage, and even when this tournament unfolds in a United States led by people who struggle to understand the beauty of globalization, justice, and Blackness, the shimmers still break through.

The divine keeps finding ways to make itself known. The veil grows thin, and holiness appears in unexpected places.

Sometimes in sanctuaries. Sometimes in protests. Sometimes in acts of courage.

And sometimes on a soccer pitch.

Happy viewing, my friends.

May you witness much more than soccer on this brilliant world stage.

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You may or may not have heard that delegates at the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) voted to advance a constitutional amendment that would permanently ban churches from employing women in any pastoral role or function.

The amendment, known as the “Truth and Unity Amendment,” passed by a wide 3-to-1 margin (74.6% of the vote). Because the SBC requires constitutional changes to be approved by a two-thirds majority at two consecutive annual meetings, the measure will face a final, binding vote in June 2027 in Indianapolis.

I am not surprised by this decision, nor am I directly affected by it. Though I grew up Southern Baptist, I am now an ordained minister in the Alliance of Baptist tradition, which has been ordaining women to preach and teach the gospel since 1987. Further, I no longer serve in direct pastoral ministry, and my family currently worships in a PC(USA) congregation, a denomination that has ordained women for seventy years.

But being insulated from a decision does not absolve me from caring about it.

Nor does it excuse me from naming what I believe it represents: a profound distortion of both the gospel and the witness of Scripture.

None of us are free until all of us are.

As long as there are men determined to limit women’s authority in the church (and anywhere), and as long as there are women who remain in Southern Baptist congregations for the many complicated, faithful, and deeply personal reasons they do, I will continue to say what has always been true: women have always preached the gospel. Women preach the gospel today. Women will preach the gospel tomorrow.

No vote can undo that reality.

And if we’re honest, this is a tired conversation. Or perhaps it is not a conversation at all.

Because despite the endless appeals to biblical authority, this debate has never been primarily about Scripture. It is about power: who gets to hold it, who is denied it, and what theological arguments are deployed to justify that denial.

The question has never really been whether women are gifted, called, capable, or faithful enough to preach. The church has already answered that question countless times. The question is whether those in power are willing to recognize what God has already done and is already doing: calling women, LGBTQIA+ people, and others to preach and teach the good news, and refusing to limit God’s call to those who fit someone else’s narrow definition of who belongs in the pulpit.

So if someone in your life believes this vote matters, if someone tells you that women (or anyone else) cannot preach, cannot pastor, cannot faithfully proclaim the gospel because a denomination has voted to say so, I want you to remember something:

Before there was a Southern Baptist Convention, there was Mary Magdalene announcing resurrection.

Before there were constitutional amendments, there were women prophesying, teaching, leading house churches, and carrying the good news into the world.

And long after this vote is forgotten, women will still be preaching.

Because the call of God has never been subject to a ballot, and I give thanks to God that it never will be.

Preach on, my sisters. Preach on.

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Greetings from a little writing getaway at a place created for quiet.

Several years ago, a woman who participated in The Academy for Spiritual Formation’s Two-Year Program chose, as her culminating project, to create a small, simple place where people could step away from their ordinary lives to pray, write, rest, and simply be.

(I used to serve on staff with The Academy, am still a monthly donor, volunteer on its Development Team, and will soon join the faculty of the Two-Year Program, where I’ll teach on embodiment and spirituality.)

The quiet house is called Poustinia, a Russian word meaning “desert.” It is beautiful in all the ways that matter: simple, peaceful, and spacious enough to hear yourself think.

It’s also exactly what I needed to begin work on my next book—a collection of psalms by women, for women, and with women.

I like to imagine that women sang many of these songs first. Or perhaps, if they had been the ones whose voices were preserved, we might have inherited a more expansive, more tender, and more honest songbook for our faith.

And so here I am, writing.

And still wanting to share with you a simple list of things I’m thinking about, giving thanks for, and celebrating in these final days of spring and the threshold of summer.

Joy, after all, is new every morning, according to the psalmist. Or at the very least, it can be.

When we are willing to open our eyes and our hearts to the ordinary, miraculous love that surrounds us all the time.

—

Poustinia
(See musings above.)

Kallen Mikel Art
I keep returning to her work. She is both fierce and gentle all at once, portraying women as the complex and layered beings that we are.

Amy Poehler and Tom Holland
If you haven’t watched their conversation yet, consider this your nudge.

And if you do watch it, you’ll hear them talk about this dance, which I have now watched more times than I care to admit and still find delightful every single time.

The grass
Always the grass.

Touch it. Sit in it. Walk barefoot through it.

Let your toes sink into the earth and remember that you belong to a living, breathing, loving world.

A Substack Live with my dear friend

Tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m. CT, I’ll be going live on Substack with my dear friend .

We could probably talk for hours about faith, life, books, music, and whatever else wanders into the conversation, but we’ll keep it to 30–40 minutes just for you.

Join us if you can. And if you can’t, no worries—the recording will be waiting for you whenever you have a few sacred moments to enjoy it.

—

What are you finding joy in these days? Drop a note in the comments to let us know.

—

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Infertility Is a Myth

Stay with me.

As someone who was diagnosed as “infertile” while trying to conceive our second child, I know the heartbreak, pain, and challenges of wanting to be pregnant and not being, month after month after month.

And still, we’ve been sold a lie when we’re told, as women, that the only way to be fertile is to get pregnant and give birth to a child.

To live with an open heart is to live as one of the most fertile people on the planet. To create a home and a life is to be ripe with love.

Which is why my heart sings today when the Christian lectionary highlights Hannah in the Hebrew Bible and Elizabeth and Mary in the New Testament. These are women whose stories and prayers, when told by them rather than through a patriarchal lens, can transform the way we think about women, motherhood, bodies, and fertility.

Hannah’s prayer in In the Beginning Were the Women begins:

My heart rejoices in Love;
I smile at the voices both within me and outside of me
that taunt and ridicule, attack and accuse,
for they need compassion, too.

Likewise, Blessed Are the Women opens with Elizabeth’s story. It is a story of sisterhood first, motherhood second.

“We knew the power a simple blessing could sustain,” Elizabeth says. “It was as if we were made not so much for motherhood, but for sisterhood. A tethering to the very best of each other for life and for whatever lay beyond.”

Elizabeth is speaking of her relationship with Mary. Though both became pregnant around the same time, Elizabeth is wise enough to know she was a mother before she was a mother. She was fertile long before a child grew in her body.

Infertility is a myth. A lie. Something patriarchy wants us to believe so that we think our worth is tied solely to getting pregnant and giving birth.

Don’t get me wrong. It is a beautiful and powerful thing to grow a human inside your body and then push and groan and sing that child into the world.

But to believe this is the only thing we get to grow, push, groan, and sing limits our power and our divinity.

When, like Hannah, our hearts rejoice in Love, in compassion, we give birth to more than we can imagine.

When, like Elizabeth, our solidarity is rooted in sisterhood, we bring to life that which sustains the world and always has: women bound together, not by what we are willing to produce, but by what we are willing to maintain.

Love.

Connection.

Compassion.

Creativity.

Community.

Trust.

Infertility is a myth.

You, my dears, contain multitudes when you open yourselves to love.

May it ever be so.

Amen.

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A Reimagining of Psalm 104 for Pentecost Sunday

She was an artist in the sense that everything she touched turned into something else entirely. Something beautiful. Something complex. Something real.

Oceanside, she made sand into fairy dust, saltwater into potion.
Ordinary things became sacred in her hands.

Like an Orca, she swam with a pack of women, honoring both the great and the small,
teaching us that survival was never meant to be solitary.

No one ever doubted they would be fed in her presence.
She was limitless with her generosity, pouring herself out without fear that love might run dry.

Her smile lit galaxies.
Her breath helped others breathe.

The depths of her spirit generated new life
and renewed the lives of those questioning their purpose.

You matter, she would sing.
You are beautiful, she would hum.

And somehow, her singing invited our singing,
until we became a chorus of praise.

Praising Mother.
Praising Sister.
Praising Daughter.
Praising goodness.
Praising all that creates, nurtures, and restores.

Her Spirit moved over the waters still.
Wild. Holy. Boundless.

Spirit arrived not as domination, but as breath.
Not as empire, but as fire.
Not as certainty, but as courage enough to love anyway.

And the world, aching for tenderness, opened itself to Her.

May we sing with the Divine Artist as long as we live;
may we meditate on Her works forever.

For we will rejoice in Her divinity, femininity, and power.
Our souls are blessed because She blesses them.

Bless Her.
Praise Her.
Amen.

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There’s a mama bird nesting just outside our back door.

Her nest, intricately constructed with leaves, grass, and twigs, opens outward toward the world. She sits on six eggs, each one different in appearance. One plain white. Another, a soft blue. A few speckled with rust-colored patterns across their shells.

She built her home atop our outdoor shoe shelf. There, among muddy mowing shoes and years-old Chacos, perches a mother waiting for something new to be born.

Every morning and evening, we say hello. She with her white eyebrows flaring from black eyes; me with my yawning good morning and sighing good night.

I wonder as I unload the car after another long day of scheduled appointments, unscheduled phone calls, and the thousand invisible tasks that make up a day in the life of a forty-something woman living in Nashville.

Last week, Tennessee lawmakers redrew congressional maps during a special session following the Supreme Court’s continued weakening of the Voting Rights Act.

Now, the only majority-Black district in the state has been carved into three heavily Republican districts. Parts of Memphis now share representation with Pulaski, Tennessee, the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan. The result is a blatant dilution of Black voting power designed to secure GOP victories across all nine congressional seats.

Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana are following suit. Texas has already done the same, aggressively gerrymandering districts to preserve Republican control. Former Confederate, slave-owning states moving in coordinated ways to disenfranchise Black voters is both terrifying and, if we are honest, unsurprising.

Because people only redraw maps to favor themselves when, somewhere deep down, they know their platform cannot survive the will of the people on its own.

The lengths people will go to maintain power over others is, at best, astonishing and, at worst, devastating and life-threatening. When politicians choose their voters instead of voters choosing their politicians, democracy itself begins to erode.

And not just democracy.

Spirituality. Soulfulness. Justice. Mercy. Love.

Voting, after all, can be a deeply spiritual act. To participate in the shaping of a more just and compassionate world is sacred work. And to make that participation harder for some while easier for others is what we might call, in theological language, sin.

To live in right relationship with self, God, neighbor, and world is to participate in the ongoing work of making life more whole. Not for a select few, but for all.

As I wrote in Blessed Are the Women: “What good are our prayers on Sunday if they make no meaning in our lives on Monday?”

And still, in the midst of all of it, Mama Bird sits.

Quiet. Pensive. Waiting.

I do not know what she knows or what she doesn’t. I only know what I know and, more often than not, what I don’t.

How this world will shake out. What it will look like for my son and my daughter. Whether we will change for the better or continue sinking deeper into a poorly constructed myth of whiteness that leaves us empty, grasping, and alone.

Most days, I wish I were Mama Bird.

Or at the very least, willing to believe that something new can be born when we choose one another over power, justice over fear, and participation over apathy. When we vote like it’s the most honest prayer we’ve ever prayed. When we vote like lives depend on it.

Because even if our own lives do not, there are many others' lives that do.

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I recently wrote about my friend’s book, American Men.

Well, more accurately, I wrote about how I hadn’t read it yet but had attended the book launch and asked a question about why we needed another book centering men. You can read the post here for reference.

Well, folks, I finished the book this past week, which is a feat for me on many levels.

First, I haven’t had the energy or attention span in quite some time to stick with a book from beginning to end. Blame it on perimenopause or late-stage capitalism or patriarchy or all of the above. I’m sure each has their part to play.

Second, as I’ve noted here many times, reading about men by men isn’t really my thing.

However, when we’re graced with a writer like —one who is honest, kind, and brave, one who treats his subjects with the respect they deserve and the empathy they so desperately need—we can begin to simply read a person’s story, a story that may contain questions about manhood, sure, but that also includes questions about family dynamics and substance abuse and the angst of young adulthood and racism and more.

At least, this is what happened to me as I read American Men. I didn’t feel like I was reading a treatise on masculinity or even an exploration of it (though all four of the men about whom Jordan writes have much to explore regarding gender, identity, and wholeness). Rather, I felt like I was reading about people—their heartbreaks and joys, their fucked-up childhoods as well as their happy ones.

I saw myself in the four men’s stories, and I wept, praying for all of the things I can never protect my children from but that I pray for anyway.

See, masterful storytelling can do this—open us up to people and things with which we’d otherwise never choose to engage. It can (and often does) transport us to other worlds that are strikingly similar to our own. What is it they say? The more particular, the more universal.

On this Mother’s Day, a day that began as a peace movement (read my post about the origins of Mother’s Day here), Jordan’s book has me thinking much more about parenting than masculinity. It has me thinking more about relationships and connection than about how to raise a son versus a daughter, as if they’re fundamentally different, as if there’s a formula for either.

It has me thinking about how we’re often sold the lie that somehow what we do or don’t do as parents can keep our kids safe (or not), make them better (or worse), help them succeed (or fail). It has me thinking about the illusion of control and the spiritual practice of relinquishing it.

As a mother, I have prayed that my love can save my kids from heartbreak, even though I know it can’t and won’t. So then I pray that I get to be the softest, kindest place my children can land when their hearts shatter.

For me, this is what relinquishing control is all about—softening, opening, intuiting, leaning into the feminine qualities that so much of our tradition, faith, and culture try to demean or erase altogether.

For me, it is my hope that just as many men will read stories about, by, and for women as women will read stories about, by, and for men. Because gender does matter, and how we perform it matters, and what we believe about it matters. It’s just that really good storytelling, rather than erasing the issues central to our lives, reminds us that issues do not exist without people, and people do not exist without relationships, and relationships are rife with both problems and possibilities.

For those of us who read Jordan’s book, and for those of us who don’t, I pray that we can discover a softer way of being in the world—for ourselves and for our loved ones, for the children we raise and the children we may never know. Life is hard, sure, and it can also be lusciously soft when we let it.

Oh, and because it’s such a brilliant line, my favorite sentence in Jordan’s book is: He was a monologue in search of an audience.

My second favorite line: Fucking figure it out.

I mean, come on. These are good.

Happy Mother’s Day to all who celebrate. And to those who grieve this day because their mother was not the mother they wanted or needed, because their mother has died, because they always longed to be a mother but never became one, because they’ve buried children, miscarried them, or lost them in one way or another—I see you. I feel you. I love you.

In Blessed Are the Women, the opening line of Elizabeth’s story is: I was a mother before I was a mother.

No one will ever convince me that biology is what makes a mother a mother. Rather, the acts of care, nurture, presence, protection, creativity, and love are what make it possible for all of us to mother and to be mothered, thanks be to God, Our Mother. Amen.

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Does God Love us Like a Mother?

Many of you who’ve grown accustomed to my writing and work may be surprised when reading the following excerpt from Elizabeth Berget (yes, our last names are pronounced the same), author of the forthcoming Love Like a Mother: How the Sacred Work of Motherhood Reveals the Maternal Heart of God.

This is Berget’s first book, one that takes readers on a deep dive into the maternal images of God used to describe the Holy One throughout the Bible.

You may be surprised, not because I do not understand or deeply resonate with God as Mother. Anyone who’s read my books (or this Substack, or both) knows I call God Mama God often. Rather, the surprise may come if you choose to read Berget’s book beyond the excerpt and discover that she uses male pronouns for God.

When I asked her why she (and her publisher) made this choice, she said they wanted to appeal to a larger audience. Which I get. And still, it makes me no less sad that referring to God as male makes her deeply feminine, maternal message more palatable to the average reader.

Sigh.

And because I’ve built my life preaching, writing, and teaching that language holds power (and that how we choose to use language shapes what we ultimately believe), I needed to say something about Berget’s use of male pronouns for God.

For you, yes.
And for me.
And for my kids.
And for all who long for a woman-led, woman-centered faith, one I truly believe Berget’s book seeks to promote and that Berget, herself, desires.

The following excerpt actually only refers to God once, at the very end. It’s the beginning of a longer exploration into God referring to Godself in Exodus 34:6 as “compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in love,” deeply maternal attributes, as Berget highlights.

I’m sharing her opening story because it’s beautiful, honest storytelling, one I imagine many of us can relate to.

And I’m sharing this explanation, this excerpt, and the link to her book because, even in the midst of my grief that we continue to make God male, when ultimately God is so much more than any one gender or pronoun can express, I believe in women who write about God as Mother.

Because She is our mother.
Or, at the very least, She can be, if we let her.

Does God love us like a mother? (A question Berget’s book seeks to answer.)

Read Berget’s book (out this Tuesday, May 5!), or, better yet, read the Bible again with new eyes alongside Berget’s book, and learn for yourself.

Within my own spiritual life, I hear a resounding yes.

From Love Like a Mother by Elizabeth Berget

I stood in the predawn light of our bathroom, one hand slung around my husband’s waist and the other gingerly holding a freshly used pregnancy test. The three-minute tilt-a-whirl of waiting for results had finally come to a stop, and I now found myself considering the bacterial ramifications of saving the pregnancy test in a Ziploc bag as a memento for posterity.

I was going to have a baby.

Minutes earlier, I had hobbled my very full bladder into the bathroom and ripped open the box I’d so carefully placed on the counter the night before. I crossed and uncrossed my legs as I squinted once more at the tiny printed instructions—how and when and where to urinate. Never one to play fast and loose with the rules, I stopped just short of using a level to ensure that the back of our toilet was actually a flat surface, per the guidance given.

After a deep breath, I went for it. I counted my Mississippis, started my phone’s timer, and then joined my bleary-eyed husband in the hallway. While we waited, I worked to slow my breathing, trying to convince my anxious body that I wasn’t actually standing at the dizzying edge of a steep precipice.

When the timer rang out, we stood in the bathroom and hugged—after a bewildered first, and then delighted second, look at those two pink lines—and I fell head over heels off the edge into something between overwhelmed and overjoyed.

I wasn’t exactly surprised by the pregnancy; we’d waited five years into our marriage to try. The truth was, I’d felt ready for kids for a little over a year (though at the time, I would not have known what “ready for kids” was if it had punched me in my well-rested face). But what did surprise me was how quickly the mantle of motherhood settled into my bones—or maybe just into my head, which at that point felt like it was audibly pounding.

I had decided, out of an abundance of caution, to give up caffeine entirely. So the headache that consumed me as I journeyed into motherhood was the very first drop in what would become a cascading waterfall of sacrifice and love for my kids.

That instinct to protect the life within overtook me quickly and fiercely.

Outwardly, I may have complained about being bereft of so much of what makes this life worth living: soft, unpasteurized Brie on crostini, a glass of red wine on a Thursday night while watching The Office, napping on my stomach at the beach.

Yet on some ancient, internal level, I knew that I would happily give up these things forever if it meant my baby stayed safe.

And that is just what mothers do.

When those two lines appear on the test, they add up to more than just an addition to the family. In that moment, |+| becomes more than a symbol—it becomes a new life, a new identity.

Moms-to-be begin to check for signs of spotting with each visit to the bathroom. They force down prenatal horse pills and count every flutter and kick. Their lives begin to revolve around the effort to create a life that is happy and healthy for the baby within.

In short, their wombs become cultivators of compassion.

And God is no stranger to this kind of compassion.

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