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Easter Hope and Renewal

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It has been a long year already. And we are only three months in. There has been too much loss for such a short stretch of time. Too many goodbyes. Too many quiet moments where grief sits heavy in the room, like a guest who will not leave. Even the season has seemed to echo it, winter lingering, snow refusing to melt, the earth still held tight in cold hands when we are so ready for warmth. Some years feel like this. Like everything is holding its breath. And yet… here comes Easter. Not politely. Not timidly. But stubbornly. Hopeful in a way that almost feels defiant. The story of Jesus Christ does not pretend that death isn’t real. It does not rush past the sorrow or tie it up neatly. It lingers at the tomb. It allows the silence. It lets the grief speak its full truth. And then, without warning, without explanation that satisfies the mind, something shifts. Life. Not as a return to what was. But as something new. Something transformed. Something that says, quietly but un...
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Waving Branches Anyway

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There’s something almost defiant about Palm Sunday . It arrives with joy that knows full well what is coming. We line up with our branches, we hum the songs, we let ourselves get a little swept up in it all. There’s movement, laughter, children who take their roles very seriously, and adults who, just for a moment, remember how to play. We wave palm branches like we believe something good is possible. And maybe that’s the point. Because life doesn’t pause its heaviness for holy days. Grief doesn’t step aside. The world doesn’t suddenly become lighter just because the calendar tells us it should. We carry everything with us: the worry, the loss, the unanswered questions. They don’t disappear. But neither does joy. Palm Sunday feels like permission. Permission to celebrate even when your heart is tired. Permission to sing even if your voice is a little cracked. Permission to join the parade, knowing full well that the road ahead bends toward heartbreak. There’s something deeply...
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Holding Hope When Everything Hurts

This Lent has been heavy. Not the kind of heavy you can name neatly or wrap up in a tidy prayer. The kind that sits in the room with us, in red eyes, in long hugs, in the quiet “I’m okay” that isn’t really okay. A colleague reminded me the other day, softly, “Easter is coming.” And I took a deep breath, but what does hope mean when everything still hurts? Author Sophia Dembling writes about a man who reached out to her just weeks after his wife died, asking, “Please write something hopeful.” I’ve been sitting with that. Because if we’re honest, some of our hopes in grief are impossible. We hope the door might open and everything will be as it was. We hope for a way around the pain. A prayer that makes it disappear. But grief doesn’t work like that. There is no way around it. Only through. And that is not the kind of hope most of us want. But maybe hope isn’t about escaping grief. Maybe hope is what we practice inside of it. Hope looks like showing up when your heart is breaking. Lighti...
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Love With Nowhere to Land

This week has been heavy. As a pastor, I sometimes feel like I’m supposed to be the steady one. The one who knows how to hold grief. The one with the words. The one who helps other people walk through loss. But this week I lost my dog. Our beautiful girl. My companion. My hiking partner. The one who quietly regulated my nervous system just by being beside me. The one who padded through the house like a soft presence of grace. And the truth is, my heart is broken. The strange thing about grief in ministry is that it rarely comes alone. In the past month, people in my congregation,  people I love deeply,   have lost brothers, mothers, lifelong friends, and  spouses. Hospital rooms. Funeral homes. Phone calls that start with that familiar pause. You begin to feel like the whole community is carrying loss at the same time. And in the middle of all that very real human grief, I found myself whispering a quiet question inside my own heart: Is it okay that I’m th...
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Lent Is Not a Punishment. It’s a Practice.

Every year, Lent arrives quietly. No glitter. No fireworks. No grand announcement. Just ashes pressed onto foreheads and a whisper: Remember who you are.  Lent is not about spiritual theatrics. It is about slowing down enough to notice our own lives.  We live in a culture that prizes speed and noise. We scroll. We hustle. We perform. Even our exhaustion feels competitive. Lent interrupts that rhythm. It invites us to step off the merry-go-round and ask a deeper question: What in my life is life-giving? And what is not?  For centuries, Christians have marked these forty days by adding or subtracting something. Fasting from habits that numb us. Taking up practices that root us. Not to prove devotion. Not to impress God. But to become more awake.  Sometimes subtraction is necessary. We let go of patterns that drain us. We name resentments we’ve been rehearsing. We let go of the need to win every argument. We unplug from the constant stream of outrage. We notice the smal...
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Holding Light in the Aftermath

There are moments when the world feels like it has split open. A school shooting in a small community. The kind of place where everyone knows the hallways, where teachers remember siblings, where grief travels faster than the news cycle. When something like this happens, it doesn’t stay contained. It moves through memory, through relationships, through the nervous system of anyone who has ever stood in a classroom and promised children they would be safe. There is no tidy theology for this. No sentence can make it make sense. There is only lament. And alongside the heartbreak, another reality is already surfacing. When the identity of the shooter intersects with queerness or transness, we know what often follows. Grief becomes weaponized. Entire communities are blamed. Fear hardens into rhetoric. Rhetoric spills into policy and playgrounds. Those who are already navigating a world that questions their dignity suddenly feel the ground shift again. This is where the church must be v...
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The Grace of Being Kind to Ourselves

 There’s been a quiet conversation happening in my heart this week. One about attitude. About how we carry the weight of our days. About how easily life can feel heavy without us even noticing when we picked up the load. Last year at this time, everything felt like too much. Christmas was busy in all the ways it always is, the lists, the gatherings, the expectations. My dad was sick. My mom was stretched thin and stressed. And somewhere in the middle of trying to hold everyone together, I forgot to hold myself. I kept going. Kept showing up. Kept caring for everyone else. And I didn’t rest. It’s something I talk about all the time in pastoral care. I sit with people and gently remind them to be kind to themselves. To breathe. To slow down. To take the afternoon off. To stop carrying what was never meant to be carried alone. I offer compassion so freely. And then I go home and don’t take my own advice. I think many of us do this. We can feel endless empathy for...
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