Who You Are Now: On Outgrowing Earlier Versions of Yourself
Who You Are Now: On Outgrowing Earlier Versions of Yourself

In the last few months, I’ve realized, much to my dismay, that I look older. That I am aging. This sounds dramatic coming from an able-bodied twenty-seven-year old, but it’s true. I didn’t know I found so much worth and security in the way that I looked until I started to notice a difference.

As humans, we note the passing of time in the changes around us. The tree that was once green is now orange, now yellow, now brown and bare. The crack on the stoop starts to grow weeds and crumble. The basil plant gets bigger, the dust on the shelf gets thicker, and the water stain on the ceiling expands to look like a dinosaur. We note these changes with surprise, as if they’ve happened all of a sudden instead of one day at a time.

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Life, HealthElizabeth MooreFeaturedComment
Developing Community: Moving Towards a Space of Vulnerability, Intentionality, and Diversity
Developing Community: Moving Towards a Space of Vulnerability, Intentionality, and Diversity

My parents moved me in and helped me explore this new city for a few days, but eventually this new place had to become my own. I tried out the coffeeshops (which didn’t compare to the ones back home) and became acquainted with people at my seminary. I found interest in what I was learning and “plugged in” wherever I could.

Quickly, however, I began to realize a need in myself for deeper community. I longed to be around people with similar mindsets. Mindsets that didn’t just recognize but acted on vulnerability, intentionality, and diversity. These types of mindsets had been prevalent in the community I was around at my undergrad, so I was puzzled as to why I was overlooking them here.

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Relationships, LifeSavannah GreenFeaturedComment
Is This Everything You Wanted, Now That It's Everything You Have?
Is This Everything You Wanted, Now That It's Everything You Have?

Is this everything you wanted, now that it’s everything you have?

This question haunts the intro of a song by singer/songwriter Noah Gundersen. At just 2 minutes and 16 seconds, the song is short but packs power like a summer thunderhead. I’ve listened to this song so many times in the last six months, and yet every time I hear it, it does that thing that all good songs do, making your heart feel like it just might burst from an inflation of emotion.

Is this everything you wanted, now that it’s everything you have?

On the surface, yes.

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Dreams, CareerAlly WillisFeaturedComment
You Can Do Hard Things
You Can Do Hard Things

“Would you rather be comfortable?” my roommate, Chelsey, asked me.

Work has weighed heavily on me these last several weeks, and on this particular day, I felt like I was on the precipice of a cliffside drop into a panic attack. As I boiled noodles and browned ground turkey, I shared my stresses with my friend as stray tears tried to make a quick getaway from my eyes.

Would I rather be comfortable or challenged?

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Dreams, CareerAlly WillisFeaturedComment
It's Time to Tell Your Story: Action Steps for Getting Your Story on the Page
It's Time to Tell Your Story: Action Steps for Getting Your Story on the Page

And it echoed on our wedding day, as our pastor described our commitment to our family and friends, and as Chris wrote his own vows to me. We promised to help each other stay vulnerable and share our stories. It still brings tears to my eyes.

As I’ve come to terms with telling my own story over the past few months, he has been there every step of the way. Listening to ideas, designing helpful tools, and encouraging me endlessly.

Consider this post as me reaching out to each of you reading, perhaps wrestling with your own story to tell, to be a listening ear, offering tools, and encouraging you that it’s time to tell your story, too.

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LifeKatie RouseFeaturedComment
On Navigating Grief During the Isolation of Quarantine
On Navigating Grief During the Isolation of Quarantine

I read about the third suicide that had happened while we were in quarantine via email from my supervisor.

“I apologize for my absence. As some of you may have heard, my brother committed suicide over the weekend, and my family and I have been grieving this loss.”

I wrote back to the mass email individually saying how sorry I was for her loss, and that I, too, had suffered a loss at this time. Within the last month, I had lost my uncle to a surgery that left him paralyzed for weeks in the hospital. Alone. Without family. And that that had filled my heart with grief in a confusing time that didn’t allow people to gather and grieve the loss of a loved one. Let alone, let them say goodbye.

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HealthRegan CunninghamFeaturedComment
There is Opportunity Here: Life Lessons from a First Time Harry Potter Reader
There is Opportunity Here: Life Lessons from a First Time Harry Potter Reader

And as I’ve read through the first three books, I've found myself lamenting. Lamenting because this bullheadedness feels indicative of the anxieties that have kept me reserved and prevented me from experiencing simple joys, like the laughter that comes from Ron's slug charm backfiring and Dumbledore eating an earwax-flavored Bernie Bott's Every Flavor Bean. Lamenting because life doesn't seem to send the purpose like a Hogwarts letter to 4 Privet Drive - one that finds you even when the mail slot is nailed shut and your Uncle Vernon drags you out to an island in the middle of a storm.

Lamenting because all too often we are in our own way.

But there is opportunity here.

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LifeKathleen RoarkFeaturedComment
Facing Unemployment: When Post-Grad Life Doesn’t Look Like You Planned
Facing Unemployment: When Post-Grad Life Doesn’t Look Like You Planned

After two full years of resume editing and practicing responses to interview questions, I’d finally landed a job—albeit, part-time—only to learn the company had been outsourced to Europe sixteen months later. I felt anxious, angry, and stressed.

Worst of all, I felt like a failure.

It had taken me so long to get this job and now I was unemployed again. What if it took me another two years to actually get something full-time? I shuddered at the thought as I waited for the bus, shivering in the chilly November air. I didn’t know if I could do it. But then what if I had no choice?

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CareerChristine SellersComment
In Between Dreams: Learning to Live the Present Moment as a Dreamer
In Between Dreams: Learning to Live the Present Moment as a Dreamer

I had one dream most of my twenties: move to India.

Other plans fell under that: learn Hindi, come back to seminary after a two-year term, marry, go back. That was it. Just one foundational dream—and I was working damn hard to make sure it came true.

Spoiler alert: it didn’t come true.

At least not how I planned.

That dream shattered almost as soon as it came true, when the landing gear skidded onto the tarmac in New Delhi, India, in late October 2015.

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DreamsKatie RouseComment
Sitting with Creativity: Finding Your Way Back to Creating When You Feel Lost
Sitting with Creativity: Finding Your Way Back to Creating When You Feel Lost

I should say, I am better at sitting, as that is most of what my job as a writer and editor is composed of; but even so, I sit with a purpose. My brain is busy. My fingers active. My body buzzes with ideas. Unless I encounter the paralysis of writer’s block, which turns my body rigid. I feel purposeless and pointless.

I recently experienced my most debilitating bout yet at a time when I most needed to be creative, but the possibility of it seemed impossible.

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DreamsRebecca PadgettFeatured Comment