healing

Healing to Become A Healer

Around the world, I’ve discovered a universal truth in my work as Director of Orphan Care for Hope’s Promise. And in my role as a parent, family member, and friend. As a human. Trauma wounds. But attachment heals. Flight of the Kambu: from wounded to healed; 2024; 15.5" x 8.25"; mixed media: watercolor, acrylic, ink,…Read more Healing to Become A Healer

Sole to Soul in Vietnam

My visits to Vietnam with Hope's Promise deeply impacted me (click the link to read the story of the painting above). I painted Sacrificial Love after one of these trips. Recently I had the great privilege of interviewing Dennis Pringle after his trip to Vietnam with Hope's Promise. I wrote the following article for the Hope's Promise…Read more Sole to Soul in Vietnam

I Am Still Here

Cruel winter winds too fiercely blow. They drive me deep beyond where I can speak. Everything silent except a heart beat, my own. Waiting, listening, I survive. Until the day harsh winds scamper away, tails between legs, ashamed, chased away as the liars they always were. All that was frozen, drop by drop, slides into a…Read more I Am Still Here

Knee Deep in Ashes

I'm standing knee deep in ashes. The shards of shattered dreams now crumble over scorched earth. Years ago, I dreamed, I yearned, I claimed. I clutched my heart's desire. But sometimes challenges twist into diagnoses, early tremors quicken into full-blown quakes. I stand here, not at all sure I remember the heart once beating strong…Read more Knee Deep in Ashes

Sifted Into Gold, again

I return to an old, rutted road marked with a faded sign, almost hidden in untamed overgrowth: "Welcome poor in spirit." But with just one step, my eyes open in wonder. The promise isn't posted on a sign, for it is evident to all who dare stumble down its mysterious twists and turns, "for theirs…Read more Sifted Into Gold, again

Art As Sacred Exchange

In the last ten days, hell-flames burned near; but hope-fire blazed ever more real. At times I felt trampled, like grass in a flood:  soggy and mud clogged, bent under raging billows. Sometimes I felt like a tree surviving a winter storm, battered but proud, lifting weathered defiant arms in worship. Many times Elijah’s birds…Read more Art As Sacred Exchange

Sifted Into Gold

Jesus Predicts Peter’s Denial Luke 22:31-32 “Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” Peter Denies Jesus Luke 22:59-62 Then about an hour later still another…Read more Sifted Into Gold

Rooted in Light

The road from courage and hope, to utter despair, and then finally to exhilaration stretched through wild lands in 2005. With the daughter we longed to adopt buried in a third-world orphanage and silence from the Kenyan lawyer who should be inviting us to come and claim her, I could no longer bear the separation.…Read more Rooted in Light

Just to Touch the Hem

Nairobi, June 2005 She refused to eat. Her forehead felt warm. She cried incessantly. Nothing alleviated her discomfort. As a sojourning foreigner, I lacked even the name of a pediatrician in Kenya, much less contact information. Even if I knew who to call, I couldn’t easily access transport. My one solace – I knew that…Read more Just to Touch the Hem

Silence

There was a time in my life when I was stunned into silence. I unexpectedly received news of harm done to someone I love, two days later met the person who caused the harm face-to-face, and then several days after that received medical confirmation for my loved one of resulting lifelong disability. It was too much,…Read more Silence