It was mid-October a year ago when my mom had brain surgery to remove a tumor from her left frontal lobe. Hovering over the place where her speech and emotions live, the tumor had grown quickly enough to cause a seizure and lost time. I remember how nervous we were when it all happened on […]
I want to run away from these words. I hit “publish” so you wouldn’t feel alone when your hopes rise and fall in a tumble of confusing might-have-beens. It’s embarrassing to admit after thirteen years of one-lined tests that sometimes I still find myself entertaining a glimmer of hope that my situation might change. It’s […]
Repeatedly inked on the pages of my journal for the past ten months are the words keep a soft heart. Truly, it has taken all thirty-six years of my life to develop a one-sentence prayer that expresses one of my deepest and most regular needs. Keep a soft heart. I searched for the words to […]
“It was suicide,” she said. Her eyes swam with tears that leaked down her cheeks while she explained what had happened earlier this year. I whispered, “I’m so, so sorry,” and wrung my hands uselessly the way you do when there is nothing that will make a situation any better and you know it. The […]
Last week I fell down a rabbit hole of remembering. It began with a search for my journal from the year we adopted our oldest son and ended with me digging through a musty pile of notebooks in the basement. I swiped away cobwebs from the dark corner of the cellar where the box of […]
When my husband and I first settled into rural church ministry twelve years ago, I was a little unprepared for the pace of life offered by the farming community where we had made our new home. We had left a much larger college town buzzing with traffic and commutes, a life where I’d had a […]
When Shauna Letellier explained her book concept to me and a couple other writers last fall at a writing workshop, I gave her my information and begged her to let me be on her launch team. “What an interesting concept for a book,” I thought to myself while she outlined the premise. I couldn’t wait […]
A few hot summers ago, the first week of August found me in the early stages of marathon training. For accountability’s sake, I had already signed up for the St. Jude Marathon in Memphis, Tennessee, and paid my registration fee. My financial investment was the impetus for faithful training. I’d spent the previous year working […]
It comes at night. Almost always, it comes at night. It begins with just a whisper of urgency, a small note of concern. It travels the currents in my brain, hitching a ride with firing neurons, grabbing the wheel of logical thinking and veering sharply off course. Anxiety wrecks my nights. These episodes began right […]
I felt like an impostor. No one had ever called me “mom” before, and I had no swollen belly, no stretch marks, and no attempts at breastfeeding to prove that I was a new mom. But the hospital attendant insisted that I sit in the wheelchair with this stranger-baby while he pushed the two of […]
