My diploma was still in an unopened manilla envelope on my apartment desk when I stood in front of a crowd of 300 sets of smiling eyes to tell them about what I’d committed to doing for the rest of my life. Though I didn’t say it in so many words, at twenty-two I knew…
Almost seventeen years ago I wore that slip of a white dress and said: “I do.” I might as well have been twelve and spending my parents’ savings on a new bike, with my little life experience. I was full of zeal and opinions and I’d found a man who liked that. I’d also found someone…
My best and brightest moments have been laced with weakness. We met our first two children in Ethiopia and spent our first days of parenting in a tempered state of shock over the rolling meltdowns. While adopting our second two children from Uganda, I saw miracle-level movements of God I’d never before or since seen. Even…
Whenever we visit my grandparents’ ranch, my grandma invites me into her storage room to show me what’s on her secret gift shelf. The mission: to see if my children already have the books she was planning to give them for their next birthday or at Christmas. My grandma and I share such similar taste…
Is there a difference between loving our teenager and liking them? During our teacher in-service in August, we split into groups, to discuss how to build good relationships with our students. I shared that I had started regularly telling my classrooms of teenagers that I liked them. One teacher pushed back against that idea with…
Often, much of what we do goes largely unnoticed; unseen. Sometimes how we feel is also hidden. But maybe that’s how it should be? Sometimes you need to live a moment three, or four … or seven times, before you see that it’s purposed. We were 23 minutes late for the party that was only…
Do you look around and see all the piles? All the stuff? All the things to do? How can we make time with the Lord a priority? The organizing projects you need to tackle. The donations you need to deliver. The areas of your home that need attention. The meal ideas that are all missing…
We all have that one book that just stands out from the rest. Today, I’m sharing my choice. The hidden years. That’s how I referred to them. And we’re not talking only two or three years either. More like decades. Most of the time it didn’t bother me much. I was too busy looking after…
I had to hear it through a half-dozen other mouths before I realized it’d been in my head first, and for possibly years. “What am I doing wrong?” It’s the mother whose child isn’t sleeping, and the wife who’s husband isn’t emoting, and the daughter who’s father is still in rehab and the twenty-five-year-old who…
I was absolutely miserable. Stuck in a middle seat on a packed international flight, I could barely move my arms or legs. The air was stifling. Next to me a man snored shamelessly, his mouth opening and shutting in concentrated rhythm. Like a yo-yo on a string, drool hanging from his chin. I was dirty,…
She slid up next to me, a sprig of a thing with her long, thin frame that will likely be taller than mine before the year closes. I was wiping down the counter — tasking — and she wrapped her arms around me and rested her head in the crook of my neck as if we…
When I was in the midst of infertility, my moods were as wild and vast as a mountain range. Sky-high one minute and then plunging to the depths the next. Some days I wanted to read about women who had overcome infertility and were happily raising their miracle-babies or adopted littles. Other days if I…
“I want a friend who is just like me, Mommy,” she said through tears to me, years ago. I feel alone. She dismissed those siblings of hers who like different songs, and sing to different beats and the spend their time ordering when she wants disorder or deconstructing when she wants to construct. She didn’t want…
Our first home together was a 1930’s bungalow, the only remaining vestige of a farm in Crozet, Virginia. When we moved in, then, it had about 50 nearly-new spec homes around it, transforming it from a charming farmhouse into the gangly outlaw of the neighborhood. In exchange for reduced rent, we stripped wall-paper and sanded floors and painted…
There has always been something. To set me apart, to make me feel different, to weigh me down in a way that I was sure that other light-footed women weren’t and to remind me that an invigorating life (the kind that fills your lungs yet leaves you with space for more) evades me. I’d find…
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