I have been thinking about trauma lately. It started, oddly enough, with Michael Jackson. I have been watching some videos and documentaries about him recently, and because I didn’t grow up listening to his music, I am coming to all of this much later than most people. His music wasn’t allowed in my childhood. I knew who he was. I knew he died in 2009. But beyond that, I really didn’t know much about him. And I am not writing about the allegations against him. That isn’t what this is about. What caught my attention was something much more human. The repeated references to his childhood, his experiences, the things that hurt him, and the way those experiences seemed to follow him through his life made me start thinking about what trauma actually does to a person. Not just the dramatic, obvious kind.

All of it. The things other people choose to do to us. The things we choose to do to ourselves. The things we couldn’t possibly have understood when we made them. The things we had no choice in at all.

And I kept coming back to an image. An asteroid hits the earth. There is an impact. The ground is changed forever. There is a hole. Maybe it’s enormous. Maybe it’s relatively small. Maybe the crater is obvious from miles away. Maybe, eventually, grass grows around it. Trees grow beside it. Flowers appear. Animals make homes there. People build roads around it. Eventually, someone who didn’t see the impact might not even realize there is a crater underneath all that vegetation.

But the crater is still there. That is how I have started thinking about trauma. Something happens. Something hits us. And then we have to figure out how to live in the landscape it left behind. Sometimes the thing that hit us was another person. Sometimes it was a parent. Sometimes a spouse. Sometimes a friend. Sometimes a stranger. Sometimes it was an institution, a church, a community, or a system that was supposed to protect us. Sometimes it was simply life. And sometimes, painfully, the asteroid was something we did ourselves.

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The first thing people learned about Evelyn Grace Carter was not that she loved thunderstorms.

It was not that she hated wearing socks to bed because her grandmother once told her cold feet meant a cold heart.

It was not that she made the best cinnamon rolls anyone had ever tasted, though her family insisted nobody else had ever come close.

It was not that she knew the names of nearly every child who had walked through her school cafeteria doors.

The first thing people learned about Evelyn was what was written on her chart.

CARTER, EVELYN GRACE
Age: 82
Room: 214
Mobility: Walker assistance
Diet: Low sodium
Fall risk: Moderate
Medication administration: Daily

The chart did not say she once danced barefoot in the rain behind her childhood home.

It did not say she sang while washing dishes.

It did not say she stayed late after school because she knew some children dreaded going home.

The chart knew her blood pressure. It did not know her favorite hymn. It knew her medications. It did not know that she cried every time she heard an old country song because it reminded her of the man she loved for fifty-seven years.

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It knew her age. It did not know her story.

“Mornin’, Mrs. Carter.”

Evelyn looked up as Mia the day attendant stepped into her room carrying a small electronic tablet.

“Good morning, sweetheart.” Mia smiled. “You sleep okay?”

“Like a baby.”

Mia raised an eyebrow. “Babies don’t usually sleep very well.”

Evelyn grinned. “Then perhaps I slept like a very unusual baby.”

Mia laughed as she checked the screen. The little device held more information about Evelyn than Mia probably realized. Blood pressure readings. Appointment notes. Medication schedules. Insurance information. Numbers. Endless numbers.

Evelyn watched her. “Do you ever wonder what all these machines would say if they could talk?”

Mia looked up. “What?”

“These things.” Evelyn nodded toward the tablet. “They know a lot about me.”

“They’re helpful.”

“Oh, I’m sure they are.”

Evelyn folded her hands in her lap. “But I wonder what they would say if they knew the whole story.”

Mia tilted her head. “What story?”

Evelyn smiled. “The one that started before I became old.”

For a moment, Mia didn’t answer. Because she realized something. She had worked at Willow Creek for almost a year. She knew Evelyn needed help remembering her medications. She knew Evelyn used a walker. She knew Evelyn liked tea instead of coffee. She knew Evelyn’s son visited every Sunday.

But she had never asked a simple question. Who was she? Not what did she need. Who was she?

“Mrs. Carter?”

“Yes?”

“What was your first job?”

Evelyn looked surprised. The question was so ordinary. So simple. Yet it seemed to catch her off guard.

“My first job?”

“Yes.”

Evelyn smiled slowly. “Well, that depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether you count the chickens.”

Mia laughed. “The chickens?”

“Oh yes. My mother said if I was old enough to collect eggs, I was old enough to earn my keep.”

“You had chickens?”

“Of course I did.” Evelyn looked toward the window. Her eyes moved somewhere far beyond the courtyard.

“I grew up knowing where my food came from.”

Mia sat down in the chair beside her. “Tell me.”

And just like that, something changed. Not in the room. The room was still the same. The same beige walls. The same quiet hum of the air conditioner. The same stack of papers beside the bed. But Evelyn changed. Because someone had finally opened a door.

“When I was sixteen,” Evelyn began, “I got my first real job.”

“What was it?”

She smiled. “I worked in a diner.”

Mia smiled. “I can picture that.”

“You probably picture me carrying coffee cups.”

“Was I wrong?”

“No.” Evelyn laughed. “But I wasn’t very good at it. I always talked too much to the customers.”

“I don’t think that sounds like a bad thing.”

“It wasn’t then.” Her smile softened. “People used to sit at counters and talk. They weren’t just rushing through life.”

She looked down at her hands. “These hands have done a lot of things.”

Mia looked at them. The hands were thin now. Veined. Marked by time. But they did not look useless. They looked experienced. They looked like they had held on.

“What did they do?” Mia asked.

Evelyn smiled. “Well…” She glanced at the phone sitting on her table. “I suppose that’s a story for another day.”

Mia stood up reluctantly. She had medications to deliver. Rooms to check. A hundred things waiting. But before she left, she looked back.

“Mrs. Carter?”

“Yes?”

“I like hearing your stories.”

Evelyn smiled. “Most people do.”

Mia paused. “Most people?”

“Yes.”

Evelyn looked toward the hallway. “Most people just don’t ask.”

I keep coming back to the Lindsay Clancy case because, as a woman, a mother, and someone who has spent time working in healthcare, I cannot look at her story as simply a headline.

I see a woman who was deteriorating while trying to get help.

I see a family who recognized that something was very wrong and kept trying to get her care.

I see a nurse who knew enough to question the medications she was being given, who expressed fear about what they were doing to her, who reported worsening symptoms, severe insomnia, intrusive thoughts, disconnection, hopelessness, and desperation.

And I see fractured care.

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A month had passed since the ‘Green Awakening’. Oakhaven was no longer the grey, smog-choked machine it had once been. It was something entirely new, an ‘Urban Grove’ where the streets were lined with moss-covered paths and the skyscrapers were wrapped in vertical vineyards.

Milo sat on the steps of the new community center, which had been built from the repurposed stone of the Infrastructure Department. He was watching a group of children play in a ‘controlled’ mud-pit he had designed, a place where the earth was soft and safe, and the only rule was to have fun.

Riley was nearby, teaching a class on ‘Rain-Harvesting’ to a group of local gardeners. She no longer wore the yellow raincoat; she wore a simple green tunic, and her hair was tied back with a ribbon made of willow bark. She looked at peace.

But the peace was a fragile thing. The legal consequences of their ‘revolution’ hadn’t entirely vanished. They were under a form of ‘environmental parole’, their powers monitored by a new board of citizens, including Beatrice, who took her role as ‘Moral Overseer’ very seriously.

“You still owe me for those groceries, Milo,” Beatrice said, walking up to him with a cane made of living oak. She looked at the thriving garden around them and smiled, though she tried to hide it. “But I suppose the fresh tomatoes you left on my porch are a good start.”

“We’re trying, Beatrice,” Milo said, standing up. “We’re learning that the ground doesn’t have to be a trap to be important.”

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This case exposes a tension that ordinary abortion debates can hide, because pregnancy usually places fetal life and bodily autonomy inside the same person. Surrogacy separates them.

If the intended mother were carrying the pregnancy herself, the familiar abortion question would be: Does she have the right to terminate because it is her body? But with a surrogate, the intended parents can believe they have authority over decisions concerning their child, while the surrogate can say, You may be the parents, but this procedure happens to my body.

Those two claims collide.

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Every afternoon at two o’clock, Evelyn Grace Carter sat in the same chair by the window and played a game on her phone. To most people who walked past her, that was all they saw. An old woman. A phone. A game. A way to pass the hours.

Sometimes visitors glanced at her as they walked through the bright lobby of Willow Creek Assisted Living and smiled politely. Sometimes they whispered.

“She plays that thing all day.”

“She must be bored.”

“I guess that’s what people do when they retire.”

Evelyn heard more than people thought she did. People often assumed age came with deafness. They spoke louder, slower, and sometimes around her as if she had already disappeared. But Evelyn Carter was not disappearing. Not yet. Her fingers moved slowly across the screen, tapping colored shapes and matching little symbols. The game rewarded her with cheerful sounds and tiny celebrations.

Level completed. Bonus earned. New challenge unlocked. She smiled. Not because the game was extraordinary. It wasn’t. It was simple. Almost silly. But it belonged to her.

Nobody hovered over her shoulder and told her how to do it. Nobody said, “Careful, Evelyn.” Nobody said, “Maybe you shouldn’t.” Nobody reminded her that she needed to use her walker, drink more water, take her pills, or be careful on the stairs she no longer climbed.

For twenty minutes every afternoon, Evelyn wasn’t a resident. She wasn’t Room 214. She wasn’t a medication list. She wasn’t a woman with arthritis in her hands and a hip replacement scar beneath her nightgown. She was simply Evelyn. And Evelyn liked winning.

The room around her smelled faintly of lemon cleaner and the cinnamon candles residents were allowed to keep on their tables. Outside her window, the Texas sun poured across the courtyard, warming the flower beds where volunteers planted flowers every spring. She could see the younger residents walking slowly along the path. Some with walkers. Some holding hands. Some alone. Everyone carrying a story nobody bothered to ask about.

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Evelyn looked down at her phone. A new level appeared. She tapped the screen. A little burst of confetti filled the display. She laughed quietly. “Good job,” she whispered. She wasn’t sure if she was talking to the game. Or herself.

Across the room, a young aide named Mia glanced over while sorting paperwork. “Mrs. Carter?”

Evelyn looked up. “Yes, dear?”

“You’ve been playing that game for almost an hour.”

Evelyn looked at the phone, then back at Mia. “Have I?”

Mia smiled. “Yep.”

Evelyn shrugged. “Well, I suppose there are worse ways to spend an afternoon.”

Mia opened her mouth, ready to say something about screen time or taking a walk. Something about getting some activity. Something she had been trained to say. But she stopped. Because Evelyn wasn’t staring blankly at the phone. She wasn’t lost. She looked happy. Actually happy.

“I guess you’re right,” Mia said.

Evelyn smiled. “Most people forget that enjoying something doesn’t have an expiration date.”

Mia paused. “What do you mean?”

Evelyn looked back toward the window. The sunlight caught the silver strands of hair around her face. “I mean people think when you get old, you’re supposed to become serious all the time.”

She tapped the phone gently. “But I spent eighty-two years being responsible. I think I’ve earned a few minutes of matching purple diamonds.”

Mia laughed. A real laugh. Not the polite one caregivers sometimes gave residents. A real one.

Evelyn smiled because she liked hearing young people laugh. It reminded her of children. Hundreds of them. Children with missing teeth and messy hair. Children who ran into the cafeteria hungry. Children who needed more than just a lunch tray.

But Mia didn’t know that yet. Nobody here knew. They saw Evelyn Carter as an elderly woman playing a game. They didn’t know she had spent thirty years standing behind a cafeteria counter, remembering which children needed extra food. They didn’t know she had kept granola bars in her purse for kids who were too embarrassed to ask. They didn’t know she had once been a daughter, a wife, a mother, a friend, a neighbor. They didn’t know she had a lifetime behind those tired eyes. They only saw what was left. And that was the mistake people made. They looked at the final chapter and assumed they knew the whole book.

Today, August 17, is their birthday, and I would love to use the occasion to shine a little extra light on the ministry they continue to pour themselves into.

They serve children, families, widows, people living in poverty, and communities around the brick kilns and poor villages—bringing practical help while sharing the hope of Jesus Christ.

So instead of simply saying “Happy Birthday,” I’d love for us to bless the work they care so deeply about.

If you would like to celebrate them, you can:

• Pray for them and the people they serve.

• Follow and share their ministry so more people see their work.

• Leave them an encouraging birthday message.

• Support their ministry directly through the links below, if you are able.

Sometimes supporting a ministry isn’t only about how much one person can give. It’s also about helping their work reach the next person who can help.

Happy Birthday, Sisters Naina and Sunaina. May Yahweh c…

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The aftermath was a slow, quiet settling. The sirens faded into the distance, and the heavy rain turned into a soft, cleansing mist. Milo and Riley stood atop the ruins of City Hall, which had partially sunk into the park they had played in as children. The building was now a tilted, majestic wreck, half-buried in the earth like a ship at sea.

Victor was gone, led away in handcuffs, but the damage remained. The city was a patchwork of blue stone, jagged concrete, and deep, treacherous mud.

“We have to fix it, don’t we?” Riley asked, her voice small. She was leaning against a marble pillar that was now at chest height. “Not just the mud. All of it.”

Milo looked at his hands. They were caked in dirt, but for the first time, they felt light. “We can’t ‘fix’ it back to the way it was, Riley. The pavement is broken. The old rules are gone.”

“So, what do we do?”

Milo knelt and pressed his palms to the top of the sunken City Hall. He didn’t try to lift it. He didn’t try to liquefy it. He reached deeper, past the concrete and the sewers, down to the ancient, sleeping heartbeat of the Oakhaven soil.

“We give it a reason to grow,” he said.

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A few months ago, I stepped outside and looked toward the northwest sky.

Two brilliant lights hung low above the horizon. At first, I simply admired the view. Later, I learned they were Venus and Jupiter appearing unusually close together.

It made me think.

Not because I immediately assumed it was an omen or a prediction. Quite the opposite.

I was simply reminded of how often the sky has marked important seasons in my life.

I remember the total eclipse of 2017. It didn’t pass directly over Texas, but I still watched it through a homemade viewing box and saw that unmistakable “bite” taken out of the sun.

Then came 2023.

The annular eclipse.

Then 2024.

The total solar eclipse.

For many Texans, witnessing both within such a short span of time was a rare gift. I stood beneath those darkened skies, aware that I was watching something people would travel thousands of miles to see.

At the time, I was also walking through one of the busiest and most transformative seasons of my life.

I had completed two …

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In June, I wrote about a little boy who ran out of his Sunday school classroom looking for his mother. He was upset. Another child had said something that hurt him, and in that moment, the only place he wanted to be was with his mom. The teacher had followed him.

The adults eventually tried to piece together what had happened, but another child had another version of the story.

Two children. Two experiences. Two versions of the same moment.

I wrote then that sometimes children can both be telling the truth as they experienced it. I still believe that.

But recently, another experience happened one Sunday that gave me something else to think about.

This time, a little boy wanted to leave the classroom too. Something had happened between him and another child. The teacher had not heard the words. She had not seen the interaction. She only knew that afterward, one little boy was upset, and wanted his mother.

This time, though, he was encouraged to stay in the classroom. So he stayed.

And when class was over, the teacher did exactly what teachers should do when they know something happened but do not know exactly what. She told his mother.

“I didn’t see what happened,” she explained, “but something happened. He was upset.”

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I just finished reading the decision, and honestly I’m aghast.

What strikes me isn’t even the legal argument; it’s the reality of what happened. A family lost a home that had been assessed at nearly $194,400 over a tax debt of about $2,242. That’s a life-changing loss over a relatively small amount of money.

I understand the Court’s reasoning that governments need a way to collect unpaid taxes, but I can’t help thinking there had to be less drastic options. A payment plan, a lien, refinancing, a voluntary sale of the home, something that would have allowed the family to preserve the equity they had spent years building.

What troubles me most is that the discussion becomes so focused on constitutional theory that it’s easy to forget there were real people living in that house. Losing a home over a debt that small feels deeply disproportionate, regardless of whether the Court ultimately found it constitutional.

Justice Thomas’s separate opinion was particularly interesting because he seemed…

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The roof of the Department tilted at a precarious forty-five-degree angle. Victor lost his footing, the detonator sliding across the smooth surface toward the edge. He lunged for it, but a sudden gust of wind, Riley’s doing, blew it just out of his reach.

But as the building groaned and a nearby section of the street collapsed into the void, a new sound cut through the chaos. A high-pitched, desperate yapping.

At the edge of the newly formed sinkhole, a small, scruffy terrier was clinging to a piece of broken asphalt. It was the same stray dog that had haunted the park since they were children, a local fixture that everyone fed but no one owned. It was sliding toward the dark, churning abyss where the sewers and the earth met in a violent whirlpool.

Milo froze. He looked at Victor, who was scrambling for the detonator. He looked at the dog.

“Milo, the detonator!” Riley screamed, pointing at the device that was about to fall into Victor’s hands.

Milo didn’t look at the detonator. He looked at the small, terrified animal. “The world doesn’t need more traps, Riley.”

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At 2:53 a.m., I sat awake during a thunderstorm regulating four anxious dogs while secretly being just as anxious myself.

The weather alerts were sounding. Flash flood warnings were rolling across Texas. My goats weren’t home. Six of them were staying at a friend’s property several miles away, grazing lush pasture and enjoying a life far better than the hay-only existence I’d been able to offer.

The problem? The pasture sits low. Very low. The road is higher than the house. The house is higher than the goat pasture. And the old shed the goats use for shelter sits lower still. I knew it. The property owner knew it. And as the rain hammered the roof, we were both awake wondering the same thing: How much water is too much water? This wasn’t imaginary worry. A previous flash flood had washed out the driveway leading down to the property. I had seen the damage with my own eyes. I knew what water could do there.

So while the dogs paced, panted, and searched for reassurance, I found myself …

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When religion is used to excuse men from responsibility and make women responsible for male desire, it becomes a weapon. Women are no longer treated as full human beings made in the image of God, but as temptations to be hidden, bodies to be controlled, and vessels valued mainly for sex and childbirth. Whether it appears in Christianity, Islam, or any other tradition, that kind of patriarchal extremism does not protect women; it makes them easier to blame, silence, and abuse.

Male desire, male misconduct, and male violence are treated as unavoidable, while women are made responsible for managing them. The woman becomes the temptation, the danger, the disgrace, or the scapegoat, rather than the man being held accountable for his own mind and actions.

That is not modesty. It is not protection. It is a system of control.

When a religious culture teaches that a woman’s body causes a man to sin, it quietly transfers responsibility from the person choosing the behavior to the person being look…

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The counter-resonance worked. With a sound like a gunshot, the stone block encasing Milo’s legs shattered into a thousand pieces. He collapsed onto the wet floor, his muscles screaming, but he was free.

At the same moment, the wall of the cell exploded inward as Riley’s water-drill finally broke through. She stepped into the room, looking like a drowned rat but grinning like a shark.

“Took you long enough,” Milo wheezed, pushing himself up.

“I had to find parking,” she joked, though her voice was thick with relief. She grabbed his arm, helping him stand. “We have to go. The whole building is starting to lean. My ‘erosion’ might have been a bit too effective.”

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When I look back over the stories I’ve written recently, I realize they all circle around the same question.

Not faith.

Not parenting.

Not special needs.

Not caregiving.

Though all of those things appear along the way.

The real question is this: What happens when we lose ourselves?

Sometimes it looks like a college student slowly drifting away from the rhythms that once anchored her faith.

Sometimes it looks like a mother who has spent so many years caring for everyone else that she no longer recognizes herself.

Sometimes it looks like a caregiver running on empty while the world applauds her sacrifice.

Sometimes it looks like a child searching for connection in a world that doesn’t understand him.

Different stories.

Different seasons.

The same longing: To be seen.

To be known.

To belong.

To find our way home again.

Perhaps that is why Ecclesiastes speaks so deeply to me.

For everything there is a season:

• A season of becoming.

• A season of wandering.

• A season of carrying burdens.

• A season of healing.

• A seaso…

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We All Live Through Seasons

There was a time when I thought grief had a beginning and an end.

That healing was something you eventually “finished.”

Life has taught me otherwise.

The older I become, the more I realize we don’t simply pass through one season before entering another. We often live several seasons all at once.

We can be grieving while celebrating.

Exhausted while hopeful.

Afraid while deeply grateful.

That realization is what inspired my novel For Everything, a Time.

Jolene’s story begins with a young woman who thinks she knows exactly who she is and where she’s headed. She arrives at college carrying her faith, her plans, and quiet confidence that she’ll navigate whatever lies ahead. But life has a way of revealing the places where we’ve slowly drifted—not in rebellion, but in the ordinary distractions and hardships that pull us away from the rhythms that once grounded us.

Through friendship, loss, unexpected love, and the slow work of healing, Jolene discovers that God’s grace ne…

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The darkness was absolute, but it wasn’t the darkness of the earth. It was the darkness of a cell. Milo was being held in a sub-basement of the Infrastructure Department, his lower body still encased in a block of the sonic-hardened stone. They had left him there as a ‘battery’, using his residual geokinetic energy to stabilize the foundations of Victor’s new ‘Perfect City’ projects.

But Victor had made one mistake. He had separated Milo from Riley, he hadn’t accounted for the city’s oldest, most neglected infrastructure: the sewers.

Riley hadn’t been captured. In the chaos of the brickyard, she had managed to dissolve into a mist, a trick she’d only performed once as a child, and slip through the cracks in the stone cage. Now, she was moving through the damp, echoing tunnels beneath Oakhaven, her yellow raincoat stained with grime but her eyes burning with a cold, focused fury.

“I’m coming, Milo,” she whispered, her voice echoing off the mossy bricks.

She could feel him. Even through the concrete and the stone, there was a pull, a magnetic resonance between the water in her veins and the earth in his. She followed the trail of ‘unnatural’ stability, the places where the ground felt too hard, too silent.

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When I started writing For Everything, a Time last spring, I thought I was writing a story about a college student finding her way through faith, friendship, and the uncertainty that comes with growing up.

What I discovered instead was that I was writing about something many of us experience but rarely talk about.

Drifting.

Not rebellion. Not walking away. Just drifting.

The kind that happens quietly.

Life gets busy. Responsibilities pile up. The voices around us grow louder than the voice within us. Before we realize it, the rhythms that once grounded us begin to fade into the background.

Jolene Rivera knows that feeling.

She arrives at college with a scholarship, a plan, and a faith she believes is strong enough to carry her through anything. But life has a way of testing what we think we know. Through friendship, loss, unexpected love, and the slow work of healing, she discovers that grace has never stopped pursuing her.

At its heart, For Everything, a Time is a story about becoming.

Not be…

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Victor didn’t wait for Milo to find him. He had all the data he needed. The ‘Mud Master’ had a weakness: he cared. And he had a location: the old brickyard where he and Riley had been spotted multiple times.

Milo and Riley were trying to pack their few belongings, realizing that the greenhouse was no longer safe, when the world suddenly began to scream. It wasn’t a human scream; it was a high-pitched, mechanical shriek that vibrated through the very atoms of the air.

“What is that?” Riley cried, clutching her ears.

From the perimeter of the brickyard, four massive towers rose from the ground, deployed by heavy-lift helicopters. They were the ‘Sonic Stabilizers’, Victor’s ultimate answer to the elemental threat.

The frequency they emitted was designed to interact with the molecular structure of liquid-saturated soil. Milo felt the effect instantly. It was as if his blood were turning to lead. He tried to reach for the ground, to turn the soil into a defensive wall, but the earth didn’t respond. Instead, the mud that was already present began to vibrate violently, then, with a sound like a thousand mirrors breaking, it crystallized.

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