[Based on the chapter I was asked to write for an upcoming collaborative book: Pipeline – Engaging the Church in Missionary Mobilization. Follow me on Facebook for release and purchase information.] Julianne is a Missionaries’ Kid from Italy. Growing up on the Old Continent, she trained for ten years as a classical dancer, eventually earning […]

This article comes to you…in video format! Filmed on the grounds of one of my foreign homes, it addresses the complicated concept of “belonging” for a people group that simultaneously craves it and rejects it. What are the three most common responses I’ve seen to unbelonging? And which do I recommend when I speak to […]

  Of the adult MKs I speak with, a majority assert that the hardest transition they’ve had to navigate is the one between high school and college in their passport culture. They’re right. It can be hard. But I sometimes wonder if our attempts to prepare MKs for that leap might actually increase some of […]

Hypocrisy is a topic we don’t like to address in the missionary community—perhaps because of the unspoken reality that a little bit of deception has sometimes proven to be good for ministry. (I’m not condoning it, just acknowledging it.) But where does “putting your best foot forward” end and “misrepresenting yourself” begin? The line is […]

[This is a very personal post, a follow-up to “Saying Mastectomy Out Loud,” which I published a year ago.] One year ago today, I awoke in the hospital and listened dumbfounded as my surgeon informed me that my preventative mastectomy had revealed three malignant tumors. Through the fog of sedation, I heard words like “cancer” […]

    I stood in front of my Christmas tree back in 2009 and sighed. It was the epitome of a single girl’s tree, adorned with matching ornaments and a fetching red ribbon. It was small, it was classy, it was shiny…and about as festive as a Tupperware container. Perhaps it was the battle with […]

[From The Space Between Words by Michèle Phoenix, available on Amazon]   Courage used to be more narrowly defined. The young men who enlisted, without thought for their mortality, to fight in global wars. The leaders, scribes and patriots who dared to disassemble prejudiced traditions to broaden the reach of justice and liberty. The humble […]

  Simplistic Thought is a modern day scourge. It applies noncomplex, monolithic reasoning to issues too broad and complicated to be assessed so easily. The topics to which we apply Simplistic Thought are numerous and thorny: theological disputes, political scandals, climate change debates, and criminal malfeasance. All intense, multi-faceted issues. All addressed—from a bevy of […]

[This article I wrote last week has just been published by Crosswalk and ChristianPost.] We feel it as a nation. A headline startles our phones awake. A quick glance. Disbelief. We swipe to read the article or click to turn the TV on—and blood-curdling reality assaults our senses and humanity. The fleeing crowds breach barriers […]

[As published by Patheos. Don’t miss my Pondering Purple podcast, available on your favorite platform or from this Anchor page.] I was leaving a conference room after a lengthy presentation when a woman I’d never met—I’ll call her Judy—came up to me and said, “God chose you for this storm. He knew it would give […]