Journeying Home Together
Dear Younger Me, I desperately wish I could sit down with you, face to face, over a cup of coffee. Well, today’s me (Or should I say you? This could get confusing.) would have coffee, but since you’re only 16 and still on your caffeine hiatus, you’d probably have Sprite. Anyway, I digress. (Yes, you still wander off on rabbit trails when you’re 39. You’ll learn to adjust. Sort of.) I
During the first few months of my freshman year in college, I fell in love. I was away from home for the first time in my life. Everything was so new and fresh, but I was lonely and desperate and in a pretty bad place. Every morning began with the disheartening realization that yes, I was still there at school…and every night ended with a gut-level sigh and one simple thought: I want
It’s that time of year again, and some days it’s almost enough to make me log off social media for good. Sometimes it’s just not great for my soul. I tap open Instagram to see what’s going on, and there it is. Every day, it’s the same thing – a different person, yes, but the same thing. A picture of a deck overlooking a mountain vista, a coffee cup in
I was walking across our back yard the other day, our outdoor cats weaving around my ankles, when I stopped in my tracks. (The cats were very confused.) Out of nowhere, I was powerfully struck by what I saw happening around me in nature. It’s happened many times before, certainly: noticing cloud shapes and sunsets and sunrise colors, usually. (My husband says I’m always looking up, and he doesn’t mean
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 squinted as I drove, dodging the angled rays of the sun as it shone between the visor and the steering wheel. This is the worst time of day to drive, I thought. The absolute worst. I can’t wait to get home. And how could I be so dumb to leave my sunglasses on the kitchen table? Curious as to what they had talked about in our church’s nighttime kids’ ministry, I
My husband was waiting for me to finish my nightly bedtime routine as I filled him in on all that had happened at a writing workshop I’d attended earlier that day. I leaned on the bathroom counter, my face lathered with soap, and said, “I just don’t want to be ‘the depression and anxiety girl’.” The workshop had done its job: it clarified my niche in writing and helped me to narrow my
On the first morning back to school after spring break, I woke up with a horrible headache and the suspected onset of a cold. Add in my daughter’s anti-enthusiasm about school and a cat who demanded more attention than normal, and my morning was off to a rough start. At 7:16, I sighed and took a sip of my already-cold coffee. “I’m just done,” I muttered, as I walked from
A couple of months ago, while the world still slept in gray and brown here in Georgia, my husband carved an intricate network of biking trails through the woods behind our house. (I use them for walking, though, because the one time I ventured out on my bike I was scared to death. I’ll do it eventually. Just not yet.) It’s been so good for me to have a natural
