The Next Level

Maria stumbles through the door with a heavy car seat. Her baby girl, whom she just picked up from daycare, is crying out of hunger. Maria is exhausted from a hard day’s work, but proceeds to do her chore, feed and change her baby, wash the bottles, and somehow hold a personable conversation with me.…

Showing Up to the Encounter

Fear, triumph, trust, compassion, victory, failure, births, sobriety. Maggie’s Place is full of lots of hard, lots of messy things. Amidst it all, one thing is overwhelmingly true for life at Maggie’s Place: the call to encounter each other in every circumstance. I wasn’t expecting how difficult it would be not to shy away from…

Divine Providence Will Provide

The MissionCorps of Maggie’s Place begin and end the day with the mantra “Divine Providence can provide. Divine Providence did provide. Divine Providence will provide.” We say this as a reminder of the radical trust in God that is required to do our job. We can say this, we can have this trust, because time…

A Mother’s Love

Life in community with mothers, though not a physical mother myself, has opened my eyes to the beauty, pain, joy, and deep love manifest in motherhood. God entrusts to each mother something so precious, so weak, so perfect: a baby. This child longs for communion with her mother. She knows her mother by scent, by…

Saying Yes

Maggie’s Place operates on a set of core values: love, hospitality, community, and excellence. These values aren’t easy. In fact, they’re radical. But radicality doesn’t entail impossibility. It just means we need grace. As we inch closer to our 17 year anniversary on May 13, we’re celebrating some of the initial “yeses” that created Maggie’s…

Why Do A Year Of Service?

I graduated from Gonzaga University in 2013. As a Jesuit institution, service is something that Gonzaga talks about a LOT. Zags are incredibly service-oriented. It’s instilled in us through service-learning classes and mission trip opportunities and our clubs. Still, I have to admit that post-grad service was not something that ever entered my radar as…

New Life

Love rocks at Maggie’s Place in a special way. As a new MissionCorps at Maggie’s Place, I was surprised to learn that, no matter how much love I give, even more is returned. Love is the fuel and driving force behind every new day. This Easter season, I have been thinking a lot about how…

Pro-Life Beyond Birth

“I don’t know if I’m good enough to be her mother,” she sobbed as I held her newborn daughter in my arms. Not much had gone right in Rose’s life. Her first memory of violence occurred at a mere three years old. Adopted into one abusive family from another, she struggled to maintain healthy relationships.…

The Gift of Tears

In my time at Maggie’s Place, I have cried. I have cried tears of exhaustion after a long day of work, tears of sadness when someone I love is in pain, and tears of frustration when I feel inadequate. Living in a house full of women, it can be extremely challenging to hide those tears.…