It was all I could do to drive home after a brutal day where anything that could go wrong, actually did. I work in the nonprofit, faith -based world… so you know, a Tuesday. My husband wouldn’t be home until late from work and so I called my teenager and asked her to get a jumpstart on dinner since I was going to be getting home close to 7 PM. She was less than thrilled with my request and I didn’t have the energy to argue. I walked through the door — after locating and turning off the horrendous alarm from the septic tank on our property-indicating a broken pump. Yes, it really was a *crappy ..read more

There is a new film out, and whether or not you agree with it, it’s makers or agenda, the terrifying truth is that human trafficking really exists around the world and in our own backyards and it is holding countless innocent people captive. ⁠ ⁠ While the outcry on social media for awareness and the demand for action by Christians is welcome and past due, we must do more than watch a movie. ⁠ ⁠ We must do something tangible, sacrificial, innovative and immediate with our outrage for the sake of freedom.⁠ ⁠ Mercy House Global created Fair Trade Friday to replace undignified jobs like labor tra ..read more

There is a new word introduced in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah that we might have missed in this familiar pillar of salt Bible Story. We often retell it highlighting God’s wrath and destruction due to evilness. While that is true, the new introduced word “ze’aqah” roughly translates to the “unique cry of the unjustly oppressed.” Later in Ezekiel, the prophet identifies the oppressed as the neglected poor and needy in the city. God didn’t just destroy the city because of his anger against sin, He heard the cry of the oppressed and responded to their sorrow. Throughout the Bible, we are a ..read more

Less than two months ago, I became the CEO of Mercy House Global. On the same day, my husband started his new job that took him to a war zone. His first day in Ukraine coincided with the one year anniversary of Russia’s invasion and on the last day of his trip, more than 1000 people died. The war isn’t over, but we have mostly moved on to other news. The year before it was Afghanistan in the headlines and the year before that, Syria. Sudan. Congo. It’s hard to remember. We are a forgetful people. We move from headline to headline. And that’s a problem. It’s my problem and maybe yours ..read more

I walked into a coffee shop for an all-day meeting two weeks ago and I was barely holding it together. The last couple of months have felt like a furnace of spiritual warfare. It has been a lot of small trials and a couple of big ones. Heat like that can either consume us or force us to look for God in the fire. “Suffering isn’t an interruption to what God is doing. Suffering is what God is doing,” Ruth Schwenk said. I walked towards the counter to order coffee and nearly ran into an old friend who knew something about warfare and fires. She asked how I was doing and I burst into tears. I told ..read more

“Intelligence, goodness, humanity, excitement, serenity. Over time, these are the things that change the musculature of your face, as do laughter and animation and especially whatever peace you can broker with the person inside. It’s furrow, pinch and judgment that make us look older — our mothers were right. They said that if you made certain faces, they would stick and they do. But our mothers forgot that faces of kindness and integrity stick as well.”— Anne Lamott I’m either halfway done or just getting started. It’s all in how you look at it. When I turned 49 last year, I dreaded my 50th ..read more

You haven’t really lived until you’ve been given the last of what others are living on. It’s happened to me more than once. This time last year, I stood in the doorway of an apartment in Houston with bags of groceries. I was there on a chilly November day with my family on behalf of Mercy House Global to welcome a family who had just escaped the Taliban in Afghanistan and were being relocated to my city. Due to a hiccup in the resettlement system, hundreds of families were in limbo and it created a massive food insecurity issue. There were smiles and nods and translated words as we were led to ..read more

This week, my family will sit around the table together for the first time in months. Only a mother with a mostly empty nest understands the tenderness of this statement. My kids are almost entirely grown up and this old parenting blog remains idle much of the time until I have something new to say. It seems like I’m the kid these days, learning what comes next. There are so many things I want to tell you about what God is teaching me right now: how leading with a limp will make you grow, how aging is surprising, how marriage humbles me, how parenting young adults is fun and hard and how ..read more

Dignity is another word for decency—and when it’s missing, God created us to demand justice. 12-year-old pregnant girls Indentured teenagers Child brides Underage laborers Survival prostitutes Orphan-led homes Violated minors These words shouldn’t go together. When we see them side-by-side on a page, we are offended because innocence and evil shouldn’t commingle. It’s unnatural, unholy, and unacceptable. Our first reaction is to stop and help. Sadly, these sickening contradictions often describe the world’s normal. At Mercy House Global, we are not only addressing some of the most horrific pro ..read more

She tugged slightly on the thread and gathered the woven fabric under her fingers. With a critical eye, she leaned back to give her creation a better look. A smile formed at the corner of her mouth. It was good. I watched this play out as she sat at a large wooden loom, in a light-filled room, in a slum in the heart of Kenya this week. I wish I could describe the feeling of hope that settled into my soul –how the pull and push of the loom and the rhythmic cadence sounded like a  steady heart beat. Every thread represented something — a pain from the past, a dream for the future, the even ..read more