Erin S. Lane's Blog

[image error]My free e-newsletter, Good for You, has moved to Substack! It’s a twice-monthly ode to off-script spirituality, with a soft spot for the childless, childfree, and unlikely families. (Also, expect A LOT of alliteration.)

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The Good for You community doesn’t stop in your inbox, though, but includes opportunities to connect over free...

[image error]My chest hurt.

It was late last week when I waslying in bed and looking over our girls’ Christmas lists. One request for “squishies.” Tworequests forAdidasSneaks. Three requests for(and three different spellings of) money. I love when they ask for what they want.ButI didn’t want to get any of it.

It all made me feel short of breath and stuffed by stuff. And it all made me feel like I was doing a bad job of, what did Plato preach?, teaching my peepsto desire the right things. Butwhat could I...

[image error]If you walked into a room and discovered that _________ had saved you a seat, who would you be most delighted to see?

Lizzo?

Liz Gilbert?

Andrew Smoking-Hot Scott?

Janell and I were on the back porch of our host’s house, scribbling big questions onto small cards with each guests’s name. She had flown in from Denver just for this dinner, just for me. Our mission? To make eighteen women who were childless by choice, chance, or calling feel seen.

It worked. And it worked on me, too. It felt like a second wedding whereby a bunch of bad-ass adu...

[image error]“To be useful,” theologian Carolyn Jane Bohler writes, “a metaphor for God needs to evoke two reactions at the same time: ‘Oh, yes, God is like that,’ and ‘Well, no, God is not quite like that.’”

The metaphor of a divine friend has never really done it for me. Well, that’s not entirely true. When my mother told me I had a friend in Jesus, I felt like I’d struck “key influencer” gold, like becoming besties with the principal or Prince. But as I aged into evangelicalism, the relationship felt too chum...

There’s nothing that knocks me off my game like a pimple. And not just the shy kind that’s easily disguised but the brazen bump that arrives on a chin or a cheek and refuses to budge as if to say, “And you thought you were going places, love?” and “Let’s order-in tonight.”

A pimple, an illness, a blow-up, a death, they all come bearing the same sly news: “Your humanity is showing.”

My humanity decided to throw a pageant for itself at a retreat I once led for young clergy. Everything was amiss...

[image error]“My daddy used to say if there’s breath in your lungs, there can be gratitude on your tongue,” Donna said—or something like it—as she shifted her weight on the altar, her jumpsuit rippling like stones across water.

That’s nice, I thought to myself from the pew. But I am too tired for thanks. And what would I give thanks for? Everything, right? And what good would that do? Nothing, almost. I’d still be here in this church, hands balled hard as sinking rocks.

Nothing was wrong, exactly, except...

[image error]“How was your summer?” people ask, and I struggle to cut this too-big question down to bite-sized. Generalizations like “full but good” bore me before they even come out of my mouth. Stories about kids and camps sound more like a PSA when I add that payment wouldn’t be possible without government reimbursements. The only thing I can think to say is the thing that made me sing: “I died and went to writing camp.”

I loved everything about the ten-days I spent at the Collegeville Institute over t...

[image error]It was the last evening of a four-day Courage & Renewal retreat, and a broad-shouldered vocal coach had us singing with what she called “full voice.” We had already experimented with the concepts of consonance (singing with unified voices), dissonance (singing with diversified voices), and now we were starting a musical round (singing with one voice in three parts.) She went through each part quicker than lightening, and then gamely asked, “Got it?”

No. We absolutely did not “got it.” Looking...

[image error]I had surprised myself by saying yes, quickly and unscrupulously, to joining the new, all-female co-working space in Raleigh. Co-working made sense, in theory, but I had tried it once and failed. The small talk stalled out fast. My will to put pants on followed.

It was Em, the red-headed brains behind the launch, who convinced me this time would be different. Em is a professional hype girl. Seriously, this is what her Instagram profile says—professional hype girl—and it is one hundred percent...

[image error]It’s the first episode of the Netflix series, Dead to Me, and newly-widowed Jen—played by the evergreen Christina Applegate—is tucking her son into bed when he says, “You have to wait until I’m asleep.”

“Hmmm,” she murmurs.

“All the way asleep,” he clarifies, his arm angled behind his head.

“I know, bud,” she says, as if she’s said it a billion times before. Night globe on? Check. Jen crawls into bed? Check. A need is met? Impossibly, check.

It’s a sweet scene, right? And yet, I had a Dana Ca...