Common-sense grace for the try-hard girl
It’s easy for me to say “Much grace” to my friends but very difficult to say it to myself. Why? I believe that extending myself grace means that I’m giving myself a free pass to Lazytown. Let’s unpack how to know the difference by answering the question: Why do I wrestle with this issue at […]
It happens virtually every time a friend and I get together over coffee: one of us shares how we’re wrestling with what we should do next. Do I go back to grad school knowing it will impact my family but further my career? Do I take that job and move away from friends and family? […]
This Texas girl thought she knew the definitions of words like big, tough, and “don’t mess with” until I went to Russia. Russia is expansive, hardened, and isn’t joking about keeping your eyes forward and your feet on the straight and narrow. Several of us from my youth group went to St. Petersburg our junior year […]
My stomach hurt every day—it happened like clockwork. Promotion after promotion had landed me a much-coveted job planning events for the Houston Astros, but my body didn’t seem to understand that. I often felt exhausted and fragile… but I didn’t know why. For crying out loud, I was Jill McCormick, didn’t my body know that? […]
In college, I interned for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and wrote press releases that covered rounds of people showing their cattle, sheep, and chickens. It was all pretty uneventful until I momentarily left, came back, and forgot how to navigate my way back to the press area. I found myself inside the Longhorn corral, […]
It started before my feet even hit the floor. I hit snooze on my alarm and knew my quiet time would be cut short. My brain whispered to my heart: I bet your friends got up early this morning, but look at you… the slacker. I truly believed I was letting Jesus down by sleeping […]
The year was 1994. I was a college freshman, and I had a thought while sitting bored in my dorm: Does my pepper spray really work? So I pressed the lever… and the spray quickly filled the room, entered the ventilation system, and invaded the rooms of every girl on the 2nd floor. And because […]
It was in college that I first heard the Socratic quote, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” That seemed pretty extreme to me then, but now, as I’ve aged, I believe that an examined life is a biblical life. In January, I set aside time to think through the month, the highs and lows, to […]
I was done. The girls were bickering relentlessly, and my response was not to use this as a teachable moment or to pray. Instead, I threw my hands in the air and blasted, “Mommy is cranky. I’m hot and tired. And I need you to leave.” This was all true, but it wasn’t handled with […]
This is the final post in a three-part series about discouragement. I’m taking you on my journey of how I’ve moved past finding my worth in my work, and what the gift of discouragement can teach us. What possessed us to do this, I will never know. One Saturday when Ryan and I were bored, […]