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in India

When Your Best-Laid Plans Crumble

The last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind. The kind of whirlwind that yanks plans out of your hands and rips it into a 3000-piece jigsaw puzzle. My mom had been scheduled for a knee-replacement surgery. The timing of the procedure had been planned precisely: it would be a week after my husband returned from ...

When The Right Answers Are Not Enough

In the last few weeks, I met several people whose lives speak a story of brokenness. There’s a lady who works at a salon. Her makeup is on point. But her eyes betray her pain. She has left her two daughters with their grandmother in another state in the North East of India to work in ...

How Do I Overcome Anxiety – Part 1 of 4

We had a few friends over for dinner the other day. Admittedly, we are privileged to call some of them “friends” because they are considerably cooler—and younger—than my husband and me. Given that we had a somewhat captive audience we decided to bore them with old pictures of ourselves. As my hubbers showed them pictures ...

Make Your Big Decisions Here

You know what puts things into sharp focus? Death. That’s what. Clearly, I’m not talking about one’s own passing. Because that would make the phrase “sharp focus” a somewhat inert point. I’m referring instead to the brevity of life which brings our priorities into perspective. In the last week, I attended two funerals, one online and ...

Don’t Let This Stop You

“When I first saw you walk on stage I thought to myself, “I don’t think this lady can teach me very much,”" she said. Her words threw me for a loop, especially since this was the first time we were meeting. Our church service had just wrapped up and she had come up to me to ...

Where Sorrow and Love Flow Mingled Down

My 13-year-old daughter and I were chatting about Sunday service at our church when she commented, “You know, mama, when the speaker asked the congregation what important day was coming up, I almost said, “Black Friday” instead of “Good Friday.” Clearly, Black Friday sales seem to be deeply ingrained in my daughter’s teenage psyche. She has ...

As We Enter Holy Week

At the start of the year I whispered a prayer: "God, I want to press on to take hold of that for which You took hold of me." My 'word for 2023' was not a word but a phrase—"press on" I didn’t want 2023 to pass by in a blur of busyness or the lull of ...

Are You Doing This Enough?

“I like you. You are… very good person,” she says as we walk together around our apartment building. She is from a different faith community, dressed conservatively with her head covered by a dupatta. Her English is not perfect, but her warmth is evident even through her faltering words. Naziha (name changed) and I sometimes meet each ...

How Jesus Upends The Routine Narrative

As someone who is a teensy bit too active on Instagram (Okay, fine, "active" could be a euphemism for "addicted"), I follow accounts that offer tips on how to grow one’s platform. The gurus behind these accounts give their followers the inside scoop on cracking the nebulous algorithm, the ideal frequency for one’s posts, trending ...
MEET SUSAN

I love words. But you probably figured that out by now, considering this website essentially collates my words on the web. Read More…