My Life
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Thankful Tuesday: The Grace to Love
Welcome to Thankful Tuesday! I realize that today is Wednesday; I’m just running a day late. I first met Amanda at a shindig that my church small group in college was putting on. We were celebrating the Fall by carving pumpkins, eating Fall flavored foods, and singing and making music. That was almost five years Continue reading
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The Habit of Blogging: Cultivation and Growth
I started this blog in the fall of 2008 when I was a freshman in college. I mostly posted really bad spoken word poetry and really abrasive thoughts about my classes, theology, and politics. I also didn’t write much. In January of 2010, I did two things. First, I deleted all of my bad and Continue reading
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Choosing Life and Love: Reflections on Growing, Changing, and Moving
“If crunchy conservativism stands for anything, it’s the questioning of Progress and thoughtful but radical dissent from an ideology that believes the material universe is ours to manipulate to suit our ends. This is what the theologians call the Gnostic heresy, and it’s almost as old as Christianity. Yet it is the ideology that rules Continue reading
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Lessons from Transition and Change
I officially started my new job this week. While the students won’t show up until next Thursday, I have spent all week learning, planning, and getting ready. This is the first week that Amanda and I both worked full time as real life grownups, the first week that Ellie got to spend three days in Continue reading
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Habitus and Anxiety
While I think I understand some of the root causes of my anxiety, understanding does not lead to its elimination. And that’s my problem. I’ve always felt that if I can just understand something, if I can get my head around a problem, if I can just organize the crap out of it, then I Continue reading
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Do You Want to be Healed?: Anxiety and Counselling
I first visited the psychologist about two months ago. I was riddled with anxiety and overwhelmed by intrusive thoughts I couldn’t shake. I was sleep deprived (new babies will do that) and hating my PhD program. It took three sessions before I understood what on earth I was doing, three sessions before it occurred to Continue reading
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Anxiety and the Solidarity of God
I am terrible at living in the present. Even in good circumstances, I am always anticipating whatever is next. But in difficult circumstances (like leaving my PhD program, looking for employment, watching my daughter for entire days alone, and my wife having to be back at work), me giving my full attention to the present Continue reading
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Big Changes, Identity, and Finding Grace: Leaving my PhD Program
Amanda went back to work this week. As a nurse, she works three days a week (giving her four days at home!), but each of those days from start to finish is 14-15 hours. And the days that she works are the days that I don’t have to be on campus, leaving me alone at Continue reading
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When Tears Don’t Help
Today is Amanda’s first day back at work. And all I have are these stolen words: How often have I lain beneath the rain on a strange roof, thinking of home? Continue reading
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An Account of My Spiritual Journey Part 2
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my spiritual journey. I know I have the account of it here on the blog, but it is woefully incomplete and evinces a strong misunderstanding of my heart and mind. I wrote it about six weeks before we moved from Abilene to Dallas, and I drew together what Continue reading
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My Life and My Work: Toward a Synthesis
I’ve spent the first half of this semester doing two main things: changing diapers and resisting the dominant intellectual currents in my field. * * * My daughter, Ellie, is over a month old now. She is adorable and sweet and always hungry. She is perverse, preferring to wait until she has a clean diaper Continue reading
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Fall and the Coming Renewal
In St. John’s Apocalypse, God declares to all of creation: Behold, I make all things new. Growing up, I heard that sentiment in the sense that, at the end, God will make a different Heaven and a different earth. They will be “new” in the same sense as a new pair of shoes from the Continue reading
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House Hunting
Three weeks ago, we started looking for a new place to live. It feels more like three months ago. All of our stuff is in a portable storage pod waiting to be delivered to our new house, when we find a new house. I’ve had to learn to adjust to the situation, to change my Continue reading
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Purity Culture and Me: My Struggle, Past and Present
WARNING: This blog post is rated PG 13 for frank discussion of sexuality. While I do not get graphic, I am pretty straightforward. * * * I regularly read a few dozen blogs. One of the blogging universes that I am sort of on the periphery of involves blogs from progressive evangelicals, like Rachel Held Continue reading
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Moving Again
So, we’re moving. Again. Most of you probably know this since I told Facebook about it last weekend. But it’s now official. When we moved into the apartment (a lovely location, really, not far from Uptown and other cool attractions), we immediately noticed a musty smell. We thought it was residue from some smokers who Continue reading
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My Doctor Told Me that I am Obese
Welcome to Thankful Tuesday! I haven’t consistently seen a doctor since I stopped seeing my pediatrician six years ago, but I figured that, since I guess I am a grownup now, I should make it a habit. I mean, I might as well make sure I don’t have some terrible disease that is slowly devouring Continue reading
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Learning to Love and Pray (at the Same Time): The Beginning of a Synthesis
I recently finished G. K. Chesterton‘s The Everlasting Man, and I am now about a third of the way through Kathleen Norris‘s Amazing Grace. My intellect, long the center of my approach to the world and to faith, has finally found its interest in robust, historical, liturgical Christianity matched by an emotional and artistic delight. Continue reading
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Sunset over the City: a Meditation
Some days the sun sort of putters out, like she runs out of gas. She doesn’t fade; she just kind of . . . stops. And some days the sun lingers, scraping her bloody finger nails across the tilting sky. She has to be dragged away. Other days, I couldn’t tell you what the sun Continue reading
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Moving Into the Future (from Abilene to Dallas)
Well, this is it. Our living room is crammed full of all of our worldly possessions. We pick up the moving truck today and head to Dallas tomorrow. Ahead of us stretches the rest of our lives, and I’m kind of terrified. * * * I’ve made my peace with Abilene. I’m leaving on good Continue reading
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How to Move Into A New Neighborhood That Everyone Thinks is Dangerous (Part 2)
The last post, while certainly true, was a bit vague. There was little context for some of the things I said. The post was primarily a reflective response to the conversation with our realtor. At no point did I intend to label everyone who objected to our move to Oak Cliff as racists or anything Continue reading
About Me
Gregory C. Jeffers
Anglican Christian | Husband | Father | Teacher | Scholar | Poet
G. C. Jeffers 