I navigated the drop-off line at my son’s new school with a bit of trepidation. One lane split into two, and I carefully rolled to a stop at the crossing guard’s persistent arm-waving. My son opened the car door and paused to tell me goodbye before leaving the safety of my presence. On the way, […]
The first time a doctor spoke the word infertility to me, one of my closest friends had just had twins. Another close friend was pregnant, and then another and another until I tasted the bitterness of desperately wanting what you cannot have. Years later, in my husband’s new pastorate, we sustained loss after loss in […]
I can’t remember the last time I took a pregnancy test. It’s been a year, maybe. You’d think that fourteen years of infertility would put an end to desperate test-taking, but somehow, the tiny seed of hope that bears no fruit still has roots running miles deep. I wonder how many hundreds of pregnancy tests […]
I never heard the word ‘catechism’ until I was an adult. Well, that’s not entirely true. I remember reading the word in a book once as a child and wondering what it meant, pronouncing it cat-a-CHism in my head, with a hard CH, like in the word cheese. I grew up a Southern Baptist and […]
I can’t remember when I began praying with a list. It’s probably been five years or more, and I only tried it because at the time, my pastor-husband had shared with our congregation his methodical plan to pray for each member of the church throughout the week. A list, I remember thinking, a list might […]
Ordinarily I wouldn’t take a walk in the heat of July through the neighborhood with my two-year-old. But yesterday that’s what I did as we practiced hand-holding no matter what and not running into the street. What began as a short three-block walk to donate books to the Little Free Library was in actuality a […]
I was a junior in college when I realized she was a universalist. My favorite author, whose lyrical style and captivating storytelling filled my bookshelves, had finally shown her cards in one of her non-fiction works. I had to read the paragraph three times to realize that she had departed from the gospel of Jesus […]
He was eating a waffle. Just sitting across the café table from me, all gangly arms and legs, eating a waffle that he’d covered in maple syrup. He’s just turned ten, and I’m increasingly aware of the mere three inches between our heights. I picked at my salad, trying to decide if a cup of […]
It was a lot of spilled milk, really. A turned-over bowl of oatmeal, a pile of laundry that had not been put away despite a dozen reminders to do so, an argument over which shoes to wear. It was a sharp word here, a contentious dripping there. Little by little, every occurrence of frustration fed […]
We were sitting in a circle on a Wednesday night in the part of the church building called the parlor. If you grew up in a Southern Baptist church there’s a good chance you know which room it is. It’s got mauve wallpaper and darker mauve carpet and chairs made to appear Victorian but that […]
