Receive

How do you write new words, find new meaning, when the landscape becomes familiar? How do you find freshness? How does your heart remain awake?  What happens when what was once strange is no longer strange? What do we do when strange becomes a new normal? Does strange lose its meaning? Does meaning become strange? What grounded us before? What grounds us now?  The answers to these questions become clear just when we feel the old patterns, once so familiar, slip away. By choice or not, the old patterns are removed and we develop new rhythms. What we once knew slipping into memory. How much can memory hold? The days feel stretched out, unhurried. Yet I am distracted. Busy and not busy. My heart is often open–but also, sometimes, numb.  But the days fly by. How do the days...

www.courtnayerichard.com Have you ever felt anxious? Are you there now? Anxiety is defined as a feeling of worry, nervousness, or uneasiness, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. Does that sound or feel familiar to you right now? Anxiety can feel unsettling and scary. It’s actually very closely related to fear and escalated distress. Years ago, I used to get panic attacks often. They would come on all of a sudden. I would experience a strong sense of anxiety and start hyperventilating. It often made me feel like I was about to have a heart attack (and I didn’t know 100% why?). I’ll never forget one night, I had an immediate panic attack. I asked my husband to bring me to the Emergency Room right away! Well, as soon as we walked through the doors of...

As a child, my family and I would travel to Emerald Isle, NC, every summer. It was the highlight of my year. We would walk to the beach every day, buggy board, and eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the sand. My family and I have made some wonderful and life long memories at Emerald Isle. One summer, however, there was a massive storm at night. It started as a regular thunderstorm, but we soon realized something was different when we felt our rental house swaying side to side. There was lightning and thundering, and waves crashing. Like most beach houses, this one was built on stilts, so it was high up. This allowed the house to move and give way to high winds like we experienced this particular night. Still, this beach house could only take so much. I looked over at my cousin, who ...

Right now my family and I might have been reclining on a beach in Mexico with extended family, reconnecting in the sun and surf after too many months apart. Instead, a chill Oregon drizzle drips from my windows and I haven’t left my house in days. I have to check the calendar to figure out what day of the week it is, and I have no plans beyond what I’m fixing for dinner tonight. Next week looks to be the same. And the next. And likely the next. I am living only the moments in front of me.  Nearly everyone in this country harbors a list of disappointments brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. I have my own, but I know they pale compared to many people’s: graduation ceremonies and championship sporting events cancelled, long-planned weddings postponed, jobs lost, bills unpaid, so many pl...

With an estimated 15 million single mothers in the United States and numbers increasing daily, it is imperative that the local church have a thriving single mothers program. And no, a one-time Mother’s Day Banquet or annual Single Moms Oil Change isn’t enough. Those are great programs, and we love that churches around the country do them, but single moms desire long-term Bible studies, discipleship, and support groups. It is estimated that 67% of single mothers do not actively attend church.  As the church – the body of Christ – this should pain us. It should keep us up at night. Many single mothers do not feel they belong in the house of God. The fear that they will be judged. They are concerned that others will not understand their journey. It is important that we unders...

On this day, Good Friday, I have few words, and I almost wondered if I would have anything to share with you here. In the space of waiting for the good I know is coming (and the good already here), I am grateful for His peace that settles upon me and in me. My heart is quieted. I am not in a state of disturbance or irritation. I am not fearful or worried. My heart aches for the world–and I pray, asking how He wants me to respond. This dialogue with God unfolds throughout these days, and I know immediately whether or not I am keeping my eyes focused on God. Writing what I think and feel is heightening my awareness of my heart. I process, in paragraphs and poems, the loss and gain of this strange time, due to COVID-19: social distancing from people we love; feeling financial strain; choosing...

If someone in your household is a first responder, health care worker, in the food industry, a trucker, or mechanic (and many others I haven’t listed) they are essential for keeping our society functioning. Most of our “essentials” are working long hours, minimally staffed, and dangerously exhausted. We are praying non-stop for God to grant them immunity and supernatural endurance. For the rest of us staying home because we have “non-essential” jobs, I just want to affirm what you are doing. You may be anxious about how you’re going to survive this crisis. If you’re a stay at home mom you may be doing the same things you always do, only with a lot more challenges. Or you might be married to an “essential” and feeling somewhat unimportant—yet working harder than ever to keep them ...

Recently, I aired an interview with the author of the bestselling Jesus Storybook Bible, Sally Lloyd-Jones. One of the things she talked about was how to navigate the COVID–19 crisis with children. Another bestselling author shared some timely advice along that vein on my blog too. Glenys Nellist conveyed 7 tips to help a child who is feeling sad as she launches her newest book, Little Mole Finds Hope. Glenys writes:   When I picked up the pen over two years ago to write Little Mole Finds Hope, I never imagined how timely its message would be. In a world that just turned upside down for so many, we need signs of hope. When Little Mole is feeling sad in his deep underground burrow, his wise mama knows that he needs signs of ho...

The world is shaking. And we feel it. New patterns of living and moving, thinking and speaking. As the COVID-19 global pandemic shuts businesses and schools, recreation areas and churches, we are left with the question: to what will we turn for community, for comfort, for truth? In what new ways will we spend our time? How will we confront our idols? How will we cope? While much of us shelter in place, not all of us are able to stay home. Physicians and teachers, delivery drivers and food service workers and so many more people are not staying home. Working or not, in your home or someplace else, each of is feeling vulnerable. A bit out of sorts. Discombobulated. Not quite the way they did before.  The world has always been dangerous. Never safe. Never peace-filled. But this reality, ...

In a few weeks’ time, our world has turned upside down. That’s the thing about crises — they come unannounced and settle right over the plans and dreams we’d scrawled into planners and calendars.  Stores have sold out of toilet paper and hand sanitizer and our best plans have cancelled like bad Christmas tree lights – conferences, speaking engagements, church services, ballet lessons, senior class trips, weddings, sporting events, and more. In the days since, we’ve seen this virus escalate globally, then nationally and then like a London fog seeping into our towns and cities.  We’ve isolated to protect the vulnerable and ourselves, working from home and schooling from home and we don’t know how long this will last. Both the world at large and our personal worlds have turned upsid...

             In junior high, it seems nothing can be worse than a new school year and the dreaded lunch break. It is the time when your social future is seemingly decided.  You awkwardly stumble through the lunch line, heart pounding, as you receive the sloppy joe, boxed milk, and cold fries. You retrieve your plate and turn to find a seat. Inevitably, it happens. You quickly survey the room, scanning the crowd for even one familiar face, and everyone seems to have found their group of friends. Cliques form, and many teen girls are convinced they don’t belong anywhere.             I thought insecurity was marked for just the awkward pre-teen and teen years until I broached my ...