When normal changes suddenly, we flounder. Like a girl learning to swim who is suddenly required to jump in the deep end, our heart rates race, and all we learned before evaporates in the panic. We flail, our arms and legs somehow moving enough to get us to the side of the pool, though we…
Category: Kimberley Mulder
A Decade’s Worth of Spiritual Formation
Everyone’s spirits are shaped. A lot of the time we aren’t aware of it, or if we are, we feel like formation “just happens” as we pray, read our Bibles, and serve others. But there’s more! A decade of motherhood has formed my spirit profoundly, actively, and relentlessly. As 2010 opened, I had a 3-year-old,…
True Feelings
“The truth is: you’re bossy and annoying!” The taut frame of the young girl, rigid with frustration exploded with these words, then she turned heel and ran, her ponytail bouncing exclamation marks after her. Like the girl, our negative but true feelings underlie our bursts of accusation. “The truth is…” usually prefaces revealing feelings held…
A Prayer for When You Feel You Don’t Have Enough Time
Father of creation, Son born into time, Spirit within me today, I turn my complaint into confession: What feels like not enough Is really me trying to have more— I’m not recognizing you give me what I need. Temper my greed, So that I can live well Within the margins of today. May I not…
Embracing Limits to Find Abundance
Long ago, and not so long ago, the sun and moon and seasons governed us. The sun’s descent plunged all into darkness. Candles and lamps lent a little glow, but eventually dwindled out. In general, people wanted to preserve their oil and candles so their use was curtailed to meet practical needs. In ancient Israel,…
Bold Gentleness
Under the fluorescent light, I was organizing stacks of new pots, toilet bowl brushes, can openers, laundry baskets, blankets, and a motley of household goods. Pillows periodically tumbled when I shifted a box underneath. Today, I expected quite a few people to come and gather items for their new apartments. Refugee families new to central…
Trapped by Doubts
I think I need a lock screen on my phone with the words “You, bleary-eyed one, do not touch this! Danger!”—on a red background, in bold. Have you ever regretted your early morning, nonchalant scroll through social media? I certainly have. Just this past week, I spent three days removing the shrapnel of allowing the…
Finding God’s HiddenTreasures in Our Identity
I am beginning many new things these days, and they each require introducing myself to new people. However, these new circumstances come with the added advantage of written introductions rather than off-the-cuff, meet-someone-in-the-store type. You’d think it would be easy! Part of the difficulty is that the forums where I’m introducing myself are all looking…
The Contagious Conviction of Love
Like a moth enraptured by the light, I stood just on the edges of a circle of people hovering to listen. It seemed as though the sounds and words were woven together into a third dimension, as the musicians allowed their joy and assurance to bubble out through their music-making. Their skills good, but their…
Positively Perplexed
Undulating road rolls under my chronically tumbling mind as I seek to soothe it by cycling into exhaustion. Call it my relief effort, or my ride to escape. However, I neither find relief nor escape. But I do find God. Perplexed. That’s what I am. And being perplexed is like walking the side of a…
Anchored Voices 