I’ve been searching fierce for beauty for weeks now. Physically, halting for poetry and photo-taking of the dogwood trees. Drinking tea in the afternoon and listening to stories, watercoloring with my budding artists and stopping, to listen: this was my search party. My war-cry looked like words spilling out the poems that fill me up in the journals. I’ve been listening to the quiet and the breeze. I heard the.. Read More
I have often made the mistake in my thinking and operating as a mom that if I am not doing it “perfectly” then I am not doing well enough. The other day I sat around the table with my kids, after a previously sad day. I could feel we were all still on the mend. The day before one of my children just flat out decided there was something he.. Read More
It’s the eve before my 37th birthday as I write this and my husband wants to know if there is anything I want to get out and do before the new day dawns and I’m older. Any spontaneous hurrah before it’s too late? He’s teasing but he’ll do it if I ask—he’s a good guy. And, yeah, well, there is something…but I just did it. Or better said, I just experienced it… Read More
Do not be afraid of a life of sacrifice… I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts then there is no hurt, only more love. — Mother Teresa Funny, Not Funny Faithfulness is a funny word to try to wrap our minds around and then at times, not very funny at all. Like the faithfulness of newborn baby diaper “blow-outs”. Whew, I mean, I was laughing.. Read More
It’s what the children know without an explanation or need for one. It’s what they don’t know too and why they need me to know it. Joy is a choice. The often cited “research” results that children laugh 400 times a day compared to the 17.5 times of an adult has been revealed as an urban myth. However, as a mom to several young children I can vouch that there.. Read More
Who knew I would speak with not one, but two of my children, between the ages of 3-14, this week about their future spouses, their future lives. I found in my boys a longing to know their place in this world. How surprised I was to come across their tiny but true nonetheless, ache. I perceived in them, ache. They are aching for their wholeness, and so am I. I didn’t.. Read More
Wouldn’t it be just the way of it? The morning I have this wonderful break-through thought, a certain breath from heaven kind-of-thought that transforms my affections and makes me ache with the longing to honor my God even as I cook breakfast for my family, all filling me up warm and bright inside—I burn the toast.
I don’t mean burn in the toaster kind-of-burn the toast, I mean, “Everybody open the windows before the fire alarm goes off!”, kind-…
It was the middle of the night. One of the little one’s had a potty accident. Walking and working with my eyes barely slit open, I had this hope that if I didn’t open them any further, somehow, that would make them easier to close again just as soon as I could get my head back to my pillow. I didn’t want any big thoughts here, just: get it done, go back to sleep. Sometimes it works, but not this night…
Five years ago, we lost: job, home, baby and for almost a year and a half—each other. My husband needed work and no one in his industry was hiring close to home. He took a job out-of-state, we put a sign in the front yard and started off on our new adventure, with five kids in tow. But renting in one state and owning a house that would not sell in another didn’t work long term, it hit its limits.
So, Jay stayed where the work was, to provide for us financially, and the kids and I went back to our old house, one state and a million miles away. I made a deal with Jay…
The laboring woman knows how the pain comes in waves. She knows the transcendent way they wash over—wash through—her. She knows they bear tidings of gift and soon the gift itself. Yet the way they come! Such tumult at times that stirs the blood to one of two things: Wild trust or wild fear. Two, so same and so different all at once, it could make us wonder how both.. Read More