This past week he told stories from his last trip overseas–around a table and over sandwiches– that still-fresh ink crawling out from under his shirt sleeve. I’d heard the story several times before, but there was something about this telling that felt different, scarier to me. Maybe it was the natural responses from our friends. [...]
{ 20 comments }
Matt and I were driving the other day and we stumbled on a For Sale sign to some of the most gorgeous property we’ve seen in a while. It was close to town but bordered by National Forest, had a lodge overlooking rolling hills, a pond, and the top of Pikes Peak. It even had [...]
{ 14 comments }
A quick mid-week devotional vlog to remind myself to Stay. Awake. Here’s a short video of me, then a short clip from the movie The Matrix, which I talk about in the vlog. (Subscribers will need to click through to the site to view the videos.) **** So, how about you? Feeling sleepy about anything [...]
{ 8 comments }
Here in the comfortable West, we tend to think of life as an extravagant beach picnic. Our families are gathered around on red checkered tablecloths, eating fried chicken, those little pickles and chunks of fresh watermelon. We drink our sweet tea while we relax in the sun, and we call to our kids to be [...]
{ 15 comments }
My friend had a marketing guru say to him once that if you get to the end of the month and you haven’t failed at something, you’re not pushing yourself hard enough. And I appreciate this sentiment. And think there’s validity in it. Because humanity’s natural tendency it towards fear. We think about the might-be’s [...]
{ 27 comments }
I haven’t written in a while because I haven’t been able to think-up anything dramatic. I’ve been looking for some tear-jerker moment, some exotic story from my current life, and I keep coming up empty. I’ve been listening and half-writing this-or-that in my head, but I get through the first paragraph, and I can feel [...]
{ 11 comments }
I admit sometimes my eyes get a little green when it comes to what my husband gets to do and what I have to do (as if it’s not obvious from the verb choices there), but it’s always been like this. I remember when I was a mom with toddlers and babies, staying home most [...]
{ 23 comments }
“Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.” -marianne williamson We’ve been back in the United States after living [...]
{ 23 comments }
Jesus had a new way of being in the world, a new system of success that was upside-down in every way. It was a different kind of Kingdom he taught about where a person stoops to be taller, where someone serves to be greater. It was a Kingdom where death actually comes first. Before life, [...]
{ 16 comments }
I’ve written lots over the past year about the realities of sexual slavery and exploitation as we’ve come to witness them from our time in SouthEast Asia. I’ve written about street children and prostitutes and the men who visit them. I’ve told stories about stumbling into one of the worst red-light districts in the world [...]
{ 30 comments }
It was the dented light saber in the hands of the neighborhood boy that made me cry at 6:30 am this Saturday. Though I loathe yard sales, we decided the best way to scale down before we left the country was to do one. And so last week it was a mess of junk drawers [...]
{ 27 comments }
LauraParkerBlog.com.
My family has just returned from living overseas in SE Asia, where we were (and still are) involved in counter-human trafficking efforts. This blog is the honest recording of our journey– squatty potties and all. 
