Journeying Home Together
I remember the morning clearly: I was driving my daughter to Mother’s Day out, crossing an overpass near my house, when a song carried me away from my present reality. With lyrics that penetrated my heart and touched something in me that needed to be reached, the song carried me into worship and brought tears to my eyes. The truth is, this happens to me a lot. Not as
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
A week or so ago, I went to my daughter’s school to read to her class. As the eighteen second-graders lined up to go outside to eat the (Pinterest-inspired and extremely juicy) fruit kabobs I had brought for a snack, several of them surrounded me. It wasn’t the Pyrex dish in my hands that had their attention, though. They had questions for me. “Mrs. Bolyard, are you really writing a
I had a dream last week in which I was driving a huge truck. It wasn’t just any truck, either, but one of those massive ones they use in the rock quarry down the road from my house. One of those dump trucks on steroids, that dwarf school buses and make semi-trucks look like toys. One of those whose gargantuan spare tires require a police escort down the interstate. One of those. I drive
Spring has come to Georgia, although we gave winter little more than a passing glance. Those of us who wait all year to snuggle up in hooded sweaters were sorely disappointed this year as we more often needed T-shirts and sandals. It has taken some work to come to terms with this. Grief is a process, y’all. Yesterday I sat in a sunny corner of the library, the floor-to-ceiling windows
These words have been simmering for almost three weeks now, and even as I sit ready to tell the story I’m not sure they’re ready. It’s a story that must be told, though, and because time has a way of smoothing out the edges of what cuts us deeply – in good or bad ways – I need to make sure to get these words down while I can. The
I’m not a big wearer of jewelry. I like it a lot, but I have about a million pieces that sit neglected on my hanging necklace rack and in my jewelry box. A lot of the necklaces are fancier than I normally wear (because I’m not generally a fancy, sparkly kind of girl), and some of them aren’t my style but I keep them for sentimental reasons. The real reason I don’t wear those,
A few days ago, a series of pretty minor circumstances collided in my life to plunge me into a very bad, very sad afternoon. I could detail the situations that led me there, but I don’t want this to be about that. They really aren’t that big of a deal, anyway, and I don’t want to take attention away from where I’m headed. In any case, as the sun sank
A few months ago, I had the incredible opportunity to meet my absolute favorite singer and songwriter. Nichole Nordemann’s music was literally the soundtrack to God’s taking hold of my heart when I was a senior in college, and I have ever since thought of her as something of a spiritual hero to me. I wrote in greater detail about her role in my long, slow, permanent change here —> Clouds Overhead Since that
I’m sitting at my desk – in my office – for the first time in almost a week. I preached at my home church a week ago, and that sermon consumed me. Absolutely consumed me. I told my congregation at church on Sunday that I had been in a wrestling match with the Holy Spirit all week, and that is really the best way I can describe it. Based
