‘Things are worse than they’ve ever been.’ Determined to drink in the sights and sounds of the same moment and long line I occupied, these words rode the good waves of strong coffee in the air and fixed themselves inside my ear. Whether curious or nosey I prefer not to say and I pretended a casual peek back to locate the I-guessed-elder owner of the gravelly omen…
in a series of letters from Screwtape to his nephew on one of the ways to lure a Christian away from his faith: How can you have failed to see that a real pleasure was the last thing you ought to have let him meet? And that the sort of pleasure which a book and the walk gave him was the most dangerous of all? That it would peel…
It’s not the long walk home that will change this heart. It’s the welcome I receive with every start. Mumford and Sons, Roll Away Your Stone Dear Diary, First, I’m so sorry I haven’t written in you since eighth grade. After Mom read about the time we wrapped the neighborhood barber shop everyone was shocked about and grounded me until senior year, I learned it was…
Merry Christmas from the Blairs, Mon Because I love you and I want you to win Christmas, I’ve come up with a list of things you never knew you always needed to give the humans you love in your life. Some of these gifts are tried and true favorites and I wouldn’t part with them for a baby unicorn. Many of these gifts give in two ways…
Permission to dig in the candy stash always evokes in my kids tsunami-style mental, emotional, and physical responses. Wringing their sweaty palms, they squeal like leaking helium balloons and get this vacant, starry-eyed look of joy behind the eyes. They are strange humans. But this is how my soul feels about growing things in the dirt. I’ve been pretending at a green thumb from the moment I…
Hey you, I know when adults sit you down it’s all like one of three things you can’t stop thinking about: 1. I already know this stuff. 2. How is she still talking? 3. She has pepper in her teeth. But if you’ll give me just five of your minutes and listen to what I need to tell you, I promise this will change your whole life…
God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy. ~Billy Currington Back when dinosaurs still breathed and all the fun wasn’t conveniently outsourced, cheerleaders actually handpainted the signs the football players would run through on the field. I was a country cheerleader mouse and my grandmother lived in town so the squad and I gathered in her front yard with ten house-sized paper canvases and a hundred…
My people and I took a little hike up to Devil’s Den State Park this past weekend. We laughed and we talked and we tripped on tree roots and we saw that God hides a little bit of Himself in everything He creates. (I posted this on my Instagram account. It’s my favorite social medium because pictures and no one talks politics over there. Come find me?) Just…
Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in His hand Who saith “A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!” ~Rabbi Ben Ezra by Robert Browning ‘It says it’s not supposed to rain until Thursday.’ I glance up from my perch on a…
In the middle of the night before Halloween my first year in high school I stood in my pajamas out in the front yard and watched our house burn all the way to the ground. A hungry spark from a wire in the attic had begun to feed its greedy, licking tongue while a family of eight remained tethered to sleepy dreams in the only peace and quiet there was…
