Every year when the rains come and the river swells, the land floods. When we visited North Africa prior to settling there, we could hear the children laughing and playing in the temporary lake created by the floodwaters. Sadly, one morning we heard that a young...
It’s not that I haven’t been around dead babies before. This is a refugee camp in North Africa. Babies die every day. Malaria. Malnutrition. Dysentery. Other generic tragedies that make up the backdrop of a life marked by poverty and war. The story is...
The practice of contemplative prayer has meant a lot to Eva in the past few years. It is a practice of consent to the healing presence and action of God within our hearts. As we pray a welcoming prayer, we are invited to embrace even our most painful emotional...
For we do not have a High Priest who cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:15, 21st Century KJV) In January 2021, we found out we were having twins, taking our family from three to...
**This post contains heavy subject matter regarding a stillbirth. We got the call at 6:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning. Our close friend Anna was in labor and needed to get to the hospital soon. My husband Kevin got up, dressed quickly, and headed out to the village where...
Once there was a North African baby who was named after me, and before she was a year old, she died tragically. A few years later, our translator’s baby daughter — named after one of my teammates — also died. I am tempted to say this is their story, and the story of...
One time I pierced my nose with a thorn. Actually someone else did — I just sat there as the thorn pushed steadily through my nose, my eyes closed peacefully, measuring my breaths, water seeping out of my eyes. It was blissful. There is a pain deep in the bodies of my...