God has begun the gradual metallurgy of fall. Outside my window, down to the left, He’s refining one tree into pure gold. It quivers ever so slightly each day as it moves from one degree of gilded glory to the next. Just beyond the edge of the dark green forest, I can see touches of copper and bronze. But the furnace of change heats so gradually, I cannot perceive exactly how the vista has altered from the day before. Like most things God does, it’s subdued, unhurried, and steady.

Like the trees, we too are ever-changing. We somehow lull ourselves into believing things stay in a constant state. But it’s not true. Even when we’ve graduated from those years of swift childhood and adolescent growth, we’re still bit-by-bit morphing into different people.Read more

This summer I had the opportunity to spend 2+ months living in Phnom Penh, Cambodia while working as an MBA intern at Hagar International. Since my return in August, friends and colleagues have asked, “How was your summer?” This exchange often happens in passing, and so I know many are looking for a quick answer. So, I usually offer a brief reply, accompanied by a grin, “Hot!” And hot it was. High 90’s by day, low 90’s by night and an apartment without the modern luxury of which I’ve become so fond: air conditioning. If, however, the question is followed by a deeper interest, there is much, much more to say. Read more

Nice girls don’t say bad words.  Nice boys wear belts and undershirts.  Nice people come from nice families.  I grew up in a world that, though decidedly Christian in its beliefs—including the importance of embracing Jesus as personal savior for sin—also had a strong overlay of “nice.”  We were the typically southern & odd amalgamation of half sinful enough to merit hell and half incredibly nice.Read more

          Being a painter is a lot like being a human being. Time after time, I approach a blank canvas with a preformed notion of how the painting is going to play out. From the beginning of the piece, I have this imagined end in mind, a completed painting that is daring and masterful- so I go about trying to control the process, directing the work towards this imagined end, totally unprepared for all the problem-solving inherent to the act of painting and intolerant of all those genius accidents/mistakes that ultimately make a painting successful. The painting is underway and I default into a total control freak. In reality, I have no better chance of steering the painting where I want it to go than I have of throwing a saddle on a grizzly bear and telling it to canter. It reminds me of Steve Buscemi’s character in Armageddon, riding the nuclear warhead- some things (most things) are simply too big for us to handle on our own.Read more