faith and life

the clothes on my back

May 17, 2013

Clothes are on my mind. Last month, in a tragedy that knocked me breathless when I heard about it, over a thousand garment workers lost their lives when the factory they were working in – in which dangerous cracks had very recently been spotted and ignored – collapsed and crushed them. No one can have [...]

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to be seen

May 2, 2013

When I was a teenager, around fourteen years old I think, I used make-up to try and make a bruise I had look worse than it was. I know, I know. I wish I was kidding, too. There had been this incident in my classroom. One of the popular guys on the other wise of [...]

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with bare feet

April 30, 2013

On Saturday, in a room with way too much wood panelling, but a perfect view out onto the castle in the rain at the top of the hill, I stood up and spoke. I spoke to forty women about embracing their place in God’s story, about looking back at our lives with new eyes to [...]

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introvert or extrovert

April 24, 2013

On Saturday we had some friends over to celebrate Rasmus’ birthday. We got all our spare chairs out of the attic, wheeled my office chair in from the study and called friends when we realised we didn’t actually have enough plates for everyone. It was crowded, even around our big heavy table. It was messy [...]

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thirsty

April 22, 2013

I was on holiday over Easter for about ten days, which meant I didn’t make it to the gym for about two weeks. And now I’m home again, I’ve apparently forgotten that I had grown to like going, had enjoyed the feeling of pushing myself a little harder each time, the sense of tired satisfaction [...]

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climbing out of the pit

April 11, 2013

I’m crawling out of a pit of self-pity this morning. I dug my own way in the last days, telling myself all the things that are wrong, that are hard, that are missing. Telling myself it won’t change, it won’t work out, I don’t deserve it to. And I don’t know quite when I decided [...]

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Never have I fled

April 6, 2013

There was a sweet middle-aged Tibetan woman in my Monday evening English class. She wore lengths of fabric wrapped around her as a skirt and thick woollen socks under her sandals to ward of the cold wet Belgian winter. Her English was almost non-existent. We worked our way slowly, oh so slowly, through a few [...]

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living in the grey zone

March 29, 2013

I was an idealistic child. I had big dreams and big hopes for the world. I read biographies of great men and women who moved mountains and stood against injustice in the hardest of places. I devoured every NGO magazine or leaflet that came through the letterbox. I started my life as a fundraiser around [...]

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life together

March 25, 2013

At the end of the church service on Sunday, I joined our pastor on the stage, and tried to calm the loud beating coming from my chest. Public speaking doesn’t usually unnerve me but yesterday was a little different. I was saying goodbye to two of our closest friends and I wanted to do it [...]

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Thankful Tuesday

March 19, 2013

There are days when writing a list of things I am thankful for is easy and wonderful and motivated by overflowing gratitude. And then there are the days when pms is raging and I nearly cry at the gym and I sit at the computer for two hours with a long to-do list wondering what [...]

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