Journeying Home Together
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
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
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
When I was a freshman in high school, I had an intense crush on an older boy. We’re talking intense, y’all. It was orderline obsessive, actually, and looking back, my behavior and feelings were completely unwarranted. I hardly knew him, save our experiences in first period Health & Safety class, and he literally didn’t know I existed. As friends can do, mine were determined to change that. Dissatisfied with my
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 35. You’ll learn to adjust. Sort of.)
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,
For as long as I can remember, “friendship” meant “fitting in,” but not in the sense of having a place to belong. Friendship was like a crocheted afghan, with each strand and each loop perfectly aligning in the pattern to create uniformity. It was fitting in to the point of matching – conforming – sticking closely enough to the pattern that any variances were undetectable. Friendship, for me, was a kind of
Happy new year, friends! My hope is that you had a truly special Christmas and that your new year is off to a good start. Sometimes we put so much pressure on the new year that when it actually comes, it has the same effect on our emotions as a much-anticipated birthday: we looked forward to it so much….but it came and went and nothing really changed. We’re still the
I turned 35 in August, and I’m still not sure how I feel about that. It feels strange, being so solidly in my adulthood and yet floundering in so many ways. I spend a lot of my days feeling like I’m just not doing it right. What is “it”? It’s pretty much, well…life. I don’t mean the “I can’t do anything right!” feeling that comes with burnt supper or soured laundry
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
