Dana VanderLugt | Writer

Losing My Way

My Ash Wednesday story was posted on The Twelve blog this week, and I’ve been praying my favorite Frederick Buechner quote from his memoir, Telling Secrets: “My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right,...

A messier manger

It was nearly five years ago when Caleb and I participated in a craft night at church to make a nativity scene. I remember that when it was time to draw the faces on our little wooden figurines, I cringed as he grabbed the black Sharpie and haphazardly scratched in...

Falling

“By facing God, we also face our own inner chaos.” — Henri Nouwen It was a warm, fall, Michigan Sunday; what I knew would likely be our last for awhile. Twenty-some family members had just left my house, and the dishes were in the dishwasher, the...

Out of tune

  I was in choirs when I was a kid. I loved to sing, and I thought I was pretty good at it.  Along with my cousins or youth group friends, I’d even perform “Special Music” (a phenomenon of 1990s West Michigan church culture) at night services, and was always...