about me

I currently am putting my roots down in Brighton Heights, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on the North Side. The many places I’ve lived have impacted me deeply, particularly the three years I spent living in South America and the five years I spent in State College serving food to people from all over the world. Through those experiences God has taught me what it means to love deeply and give freely to people even when means saying goodbye time after time. My testimony is that it’s always worth planting trees, even if you never eat the fruit.

My happy place is the kitchen, and nothing brings me more joy than having a house full of people eating food and learning to know each other. I am passionate about the place the table has in our lives and the way it nourishes our souls beyond our bodies.

I have learned that you can glorify God by laying on the couch doing nothing. Since I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease in 2023, I have spent more hours in bed or on the couch than I care to count. I am grateful to have found some healing, and since mid-2025, while I occasionally spend a day in bed, I feel like I have my life back.

I also read voraciously, love to feel the wind on my face as I bike, and am always ready to do anything that involves coffee, food, and people.

I stand in awe of God, who has answered so many of my impossible prayers. Living in Pittsburgh was not the life I pictured at fifteen when I felt God calling me to city ministry, but in reality, I can say that it’s a dream come true. God is so, so good, and He truly answers our prayers exceedingly far beyond what we can ask or think. 

Ruth, wherever you go in life, unpack your bags—physically and mentally—and plant trees. Too many people never live in the now because they assume the time is too short to settle in. They don’t plant trees because they expect to be gone before the trees bear fruit. But if you keep thinking about the next move, you’ll never live fully where you are. When it’s time to go, then it’s time to go. But you won’t have missed what this experience was about. If you never eat from the trees, someone else will.
- Ruth E. Van Reken