Faith Climbs

Finding God with Fog Lights

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The two-lane northern Michigan highway was frosted like a cake. There was nothing for me to follow but thin, black car tracks and the occasional fellow driver, whom I tried to stay away from. No street lights. Just darkness flooded with swirling flurries. I flipped on the fog lights. Sleek, dark pavement peeked through the snow. The sides of the road spilled off into powdery ditches leading to a thick wall of evergreens.

I was driving Up North, as we Michiganders call it, to my family’s cottage for our annual New Year’s ski trip. Continue Reading

Can a Whiteboard Change Someone’s Life?

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I began a new job six weeks ago, so I’m still meeting people and trying desperately to match names to new faces. One morning last week, a head appeared over my cubicle wall. It was an older man with smile lines and light gray hair. I had met him just briefly on my first day, but I remembered his name. Score.

“Can I talk to you about something?” he asked, smiling nervously. “Do you have some time to meet this morning?” Despite my smile, my face must have revealed my curiosity about his urgency, and the fact that we weren’t on any projects together.

“It won’t take long. I’d just like to show you something,” he said. I told him I’d stop by his desk at noon since I already had morning meetings scheduled. He grinned and walked away.

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Tribe Building 101

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A few weeks ago my friend Sophie and I had an impromptu wine and movie night. We shuffled through her stack of DVDs settled on a retro, stupid-funny movie called Superstar. If you’ve ever heard someone say “SUPERSTARRR” in a weird whisper voice, this is where that comes from. 20-something-year-old Will Ferrell is the main character’s dreamy crush and the snooty, blonde stepmom from Parent Trap is the popular mean girl. Most of the movie was absolutely ridiculous. And when I say ridiculous, I mean the lead Mary Katherine Gallagher, a quirky Catholic school girl desperate for her first real kiss, talks dirty to a stop sign and other inanimate objects for practice. But there were some surprisingly sincere takeaways. When Mary’s grandma finally gets on-board with her granddaughter’s dream of being a “SUPERSTAR” (aka winning the school talent show), she tells Mary she must compete well and for herself, not just to win over her crush.

If you’ve scrolled back through my blog, you may have noticed that several months went by when I posted absolutely nothing. “Where’d she go?” you wondered.Continue Reading

Would you like to dance?

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My fellow bridesmaids, the groomsmen, and the wedding guests had all been bopping around for hours straight to JT’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling”, V.I.C.’s “Wobble” and the like when the DJ finally toned it down with a slow song. A handsome, funny groomsman asked if I would like to dance and I, of course, said yes because he is handsome and funny, and I like to dance. Soon after we started and it became clear to me that he actually knows how to dance—like literal waltzing maneuvers. Despite how difficult it was to walk much less dance in my 4-inch wedges and floor-length dress, this amused me. I (unknowingly) began trying to anticipate the next steps. “Oh, opps. Was that your toe?” I asked, more than once. To my dismay, I was not an impromptu Waltz master. Eventually I stopped asking if it was his toe and he said kindly with a confident smile, “Let me lead.” This surprised me. Had I been trying to take over!? I said something super-humble like, “Fine, but actually lead me. And whatever you do, don’t drop me.” I accepted that I am not a suave dancer and did my best to let him guide me.  I wanted to dance; I just didn’t know the steps. Rather than continuing to awkwardly fumble along attempting to help us waltz, I let his comment remind me that he is the one who asked me to dance. And I had accepted.

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