Welcome to the official website of Leah Perrault

Every day, each of us is given the gift of one thousand, four hundred and forty minutes. Each of these minutes is set before us and what we do with them will be, in the end, the story of our lives. Thank you for including me in your story. I hope the minutes you spend here are a gift for some of the rest of your life’s moments…

Read from the Column “Barefoot & Preaching”

 

A God who sets us free…

A God who sets us free…

Both in communities of faith and in twelve step groups, I have found glimpses of this God who sets us free. I love to get to a place with people where it is possible to ask the question: “Tell me about the God of your understanding.” The God of my understanding is not afraid of our freedom but delights in it.

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Finding Tenderness in the Fog

Finding Tenderness in the Fog

This is the thing about profound human pain, simultaneously physical and emotional and spiritual: I begin to identify with and feel attached to the fog, frozen by the fear that what comes next will be even worse than what is now. Twelve step spirituality and mentors have whispered to me in the fog, as many times as I needed to hear it: you will not move until the pain of staying here exceeds the pain of changing. It is a whisper of tenderness and compassion through my tears.

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Presence: the art of being where I am

Presence: the art of being where I am

On the other side of grief, of leaving the broken, of destruction is recovering, healing, and growing something new. And one of the practices that carries through both seasons is presence. Just plain showing up for what is and who I am today is both difficult and courageous.

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Writing the story of a life

Writing the story of a life

In writing the story of my life, however, I live through a lot of moments that won’t make the cut in the highlights or the bloopers. Our world is currently obsessed with capturing the moments and sharing them, but there is so much (and maybe more) value in the things that happen between photographs and bonfires.

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Trusting what is to take us where we need to go

Trusting what is to take us where we need to go

The forest floor is a mess. Dropped pine needles, interrupted with deer droppings. Broken branches and fallen trees from the windstorm days before, layered on the trunks from seasons past. Grass and leaves and tiny flowers breaking though wherever enough light and water allows.

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Resurrection practice in the wake of surviving suffering

Resurrection practice in the wake of surviving suffering

Even while we hold our own and the world’s pain, we can practice resurrection. We can take a walk and delight in the signs of spring. We can count the buds forming on trees, the flowers breaking through cold earth. We can set our prayers for the suffering in the arms of God for an hour and let ourselves laugh till our sides ache.

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Flowing grace: Responding to the call with gentleness

Flowing grace: Responding to the call with gentleness

After a major trauma, it has been my experience that human capacity for intentional progress on goals is diminished. My therapists reminded me constantly that healing is rarely linear, and though we participate in it, we respond to life in healing ways rather than direct our own healing. I dislike this. And still, I have found it to be true. Healing is a flow of grace that comes from beyond me.

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Leah Perrault

Leah Perrault

Fumbling but faithful disciple of Jesus.

I am so in love with this crazy, amazing life. I’m not sure how God dreamed up a world where I get to walk, unfiltered, through creation, tasting and seeing so much beauty and joy, heartbreak and sorrow and then I am invited to love through it all. Mostly, I am standing in awe at the miracle of showing up for my life, being able to experience this moment, and the next one, and the one after that. I am a lover of words, a think-out-loud processor, and a regretful oft-interrupter  (I’m sorry – God and I are working on that last one.) Still, words are frequently insufficient to capture a person, but for the sake of introduction, here are a few phrases for most essential details: Fumbling but faithful disciple of Jesus. Grateful wife.  Practicing parent. Recovering oldest child.  Big thinker. Life observer. Fast talker. Eager apologizer. Gratitude practitioner. Exercise hater. Unquenchable learner. Compulsive multi-tasker. Board game lover. Deep feeler. Mercy receiver.

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