me in a nutshell
I’m an author, blogger and teacher. My favorite people are my three kids and my husband David, whom I’ve been married to for 17 years. I’ve called four continents my home over the years, and we just recently moved to my home country of Switzerland after having spent the last decade in Atlanta, David’s home turf. My first novel, A Broken Hallelujah, was published in 2021 and I’ve been blogging since 2020.
I’m a passionate reader, love classical music, have been singing in choirs all my life, play tennis and the piano when nobody’s around, and love bike trips with my husband and shopping trips with my teenage girls. I’m an Enneagram 7 with an annoying tendency to be too critical instead of just plain 7 fun, as my teens will eye-rollingly let me know.
Writing is my way to express both my spiritual journey and my creative identity.
beginnings
I moved to the U.S. to study at a Bible college in Colorado at the age of 28, after having worked as a school teacher outside of Zurich, Switzerland where I was born and raised. In Colorado I met David, and after gaining a minister’s degree and getting married, we moved overseas to work as Bible college planters for several years. After fruitful but also challenging years, we eventually turned our work over to local leaders who have sustained and grown the various projects ever since.
evolving faith
I spent my first decade of faith in a moderate setting of protestant Christianity in Switzerland, but was then drawn to what I perceived to be a more powerful and radical way to follow Jesus and joined a charismatic, Evangelical movement in the U.S. Only after years of involvement did I acknowledge the difficult sides of this kind of faith expression; black-and-white thinking, labeling people into “us” and “them”, and distrust toward people and ideas that divert from the movement’s doctrines.
Thus started a long journey of deconstruction in search of Jesus outside of the narrow dogmas we’d been entrenched in. Thankfully, this “winter” season was followed by a beautiful “spring” of reconstruction. Today, my faith is more critical and yet deeper, more personal and yet more widely informed, quieter and yet touching more lives than my former Bible-bashing faith ever did. I’m finding great beauty in ancient forms of faith expressions, such as poetry, liturgy, and contemplation.
writings
Along the way, I’ve met the most wonderful people of all kinds of persuasions – pastors, artists, theologians, sceptics, survivors – who have shared with me their struggles for a more authentic and humble walk with God. It was those stories that birthed in me a desire to help facilitate journeys toward freedom. I hope my book and blog posts can help you in your exploration of an unencumbered faith.
My blog posts are meant to be conversation starters, and each post has an opportunity for you to contribute to the conversation. I believe we all learn from each other, and I’m looking forward to hearing your voice. If you’d rather contact me privately, you can do so through the contact page. If you’ve read my book, I’d also love to get feedback and hear where this lands with you.
“Our faith is not based on blind loyalty or on shutting out the rest of the world. Our faith rests on a God who is well able to deal with our questions, doubts, and crazy ideas, because none of them change Him.”
from A Broken Hallelujah
