The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong in the broken places. ~Ernest Hemingway ‘I hope you are sitting down. Because I need to tell you my story.’ This, the first line of an email from a woman whose soul I recognized as my sister even before I hugged her for the first time in the year before. Life in different time zones hadn’t so far afforded us…
Because I prefer my feet naked, same as my conversations. The internet is a weird place, right? You see someone online, you think ‘We should be friends only you don’t know it yet’ so you take it to the next level by instant messaging. If that works out, you exchange numbers and which leads to voxing each other all day until you meet up in South Carolina…
Just a few little things that… lighten my load make me laugh stir my heart make me think bring me joy…. I think you might like them, too. Good Pictures Bad Pictures: Porn-Proofing Today’s Young Kids Kristen A. Jensen, MA and Gail Poyner, PhD Porn. Go ahead. Roll it around in your mouth like a poo sandwich. Make the face that goes along with that and come…
Hey Mama, As ever any morning and not excepting this one, my pilot was set to auto in the stop-go-stop-please-just-for-all-the-holy-go school traffic. Running two fingers around a twist of hair much the way my mind rounded the day’s tasks, my eyes skipped in light fashion along every different-same face in every same-different car caught up in the mechanics…
Preach the gospel at all times and when necessary use words. ~Saint Francis of Assisi Occasionally as parents, we begin to see the sweet buds of good fruit of long years of the hard labor you sometimes wonder is worth it. While my offspring are still a pack of wild talking jackals when it comes to eating, they are starting to nail proper restroom courtesy. Upon exit of the central…
‘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…