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
We travel places. Sometimes we realize where we are, really are. Sometimes we’re looking ourselves straight in the eyes, in a mirror before us, and all we see is mud. I wish I knew so many muddy days and years ago that I wasn’t seeing as unclearly as I thought. Muddy seemed wrong. I forgot how He had made me out of dirt and breath. I forgot how the story.. Read More
Yeah that photo is blurry on purpose. Kinda like my head. I recently felt very clear-headedly that I should delete all my social media accounts and this blog. At least I thought it was clear-headed.
I reasoned that my extreme need for growth was inhibited by a sense of having to stay-the-same in these places. I needed to stretch, but for a little while, I forgot how.
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
I’ve got a whole lot of hurting hearts on my heart as I write today. People with grief I don’t know how to touch are on my mind. People who find resonance in Jeremiah’s words when he said, “I wish I hadn’t even been born.” I’m praying and I’m wondering what can be done. I’m praying for that illuminating moment we all need from time to time, that hand beyond.. 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
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
From exploring Corbin, KY (Cumberland Falls) to driving through the Appalachians in TN (Cherokee, Pisgah, and Great Smoky Mountains National Forests) to NC to exploring the wonder of the OCEAN on the Atlantic coast of South Carolina to exploring Charlotte, NC “the Queen City” (that WOW reminded me of Overland Park, KS) to a quick overnight in Knoxville, TN so that we could go exploring Big South Fork National River.. Read More