Journeying Home Together
Last spring my family had the chance to travel to the mountains of West Virginia to visit my husband’s extended family. The highlight of the trip, for me, was visiting the farm where my mother-in-law grew up: deep in the Shenandoah Valley, nestled between the rolling hills and a hilly mile’s walk from the nearest road – which wasn’t paved. (And the nearest road wasn’t a big one, either.) The
This post was originally published on October 17, 2014, when the Ebola scare was in full swing. Recent events – though different – have stirred some of the same emotions in our collective heart, so I thought it might serve us all well to revisit this message. We’re in this mess together, friends. The other night I woke up in tangled sheets, damp from sweat and disoriented from a dream.
On a Thursday night about a year ago, I sat at the softball field waiting for my daughter’s softball game to start. I wasn’t watching her team warm up, though. I was watching for my parents to get there and claim their spots on the metal bleachers. They arrived just as the kids took the field. “How are things tonight?” my mom asked. That was what I had really been
Ten minutes after I should have left, I pulled the carefully-placed bobby pins from my hair and tossed them onto the bathroom counter. “I should be there by now,” I told Him. “And this doesn’t make any sense…” Once my hair was somewhat-satisfactorily in a ponytail, I kicked my brown flats back into the recesses of my closet and grabbed my Converse from their spot by my bed. Lacing them
I’d seen her at church for awhile – how long, I’m not sure, because I was in my own self-imposed solitary confinement and wasn’t fully aware of anything going on outside of myself. But I had seen her, and based on what I saw, I had my assumptions. She was in *that* community group, so she was obviously one of the popular kids. (Seriously. This is how I think.
My husband and I aren’t big watchers of (current) TV shows. If we’re going to watch anything on TV, our default is “Friends” reruns on Netflix. We’ve seen the entire series way too many times because honestly, there’s just not much on the few channels we get that we’re interested in watching. (Also, as a side note, we’re now incapable of having an entire conversation without a reference to the
She sat on the crinkly exam room paper, her eight-year-old body tiny on the table meant for adults more than twice her size. Her paper gown the nurse had given her was bunched around her neck, her shoulders were hunched, and her big, brown eyes were round with anxiety. “Here we go,” the nurse said, and my little girl grabbed my hand. What followed was what seemed like a forever-long
Last year, as my little girl finished up her year in first grade, I had a realization that I probably should have had earlier. As a kid grows up, the parents are learning almost just as much as they are. Because as it turns out, if she’s never had a year in first grade, I’ve never had a year parenting a first-grader! It’s easy to forget what we’ve learned, even
I was tucking her into bed on a Sunday night when her lip started to quiver and I saw that look in her eye. I almost did what I always seem to do when these things come up at bedtime, especially: I wanted to divert her attention to something else. I wanted her to think about something else – something that didn’t make her cry – because then she wouldn’t be upset and she wouldn’t be
I wish I could say that I’ve always been interested in Jesus. That would be dishonest, though. And if I really think about it, my years of disinterest in all things True actually – in a very real way – made me who I am today. People say that sometimes – that we’re products of our pasts – but in my case, I can see the pieces strung together like
