Tucker is a strong boy. He's a little rock. To look at him, you woudn't guess it, necessarily, but to pick him up? Or to wrestle with him? Or to be a little girl in his class who accidentally bumps into him? Oh, you know right away. He's solid. There's an implicit challenge with such […]
"Don't expect wisdom to come into your life like great chunks of rock on a conveyor belt. It isn't like that. It's not splashy and bold . . . nor is it dispensed like a prescription across a counter. Wisdom comes privately from God as a by-product of right decisions, godly reactions, and the application […]
I've been a little distracted recently. I was tangled in a web of confusion, justifying, clarifying, and pretending, blended with ignoring, overlooking, and just plain not wanting to do the right thing. And this kind of mental gymnastics can do a number on a girl's emotional energy, yet still I leaned into the confusion, letting […]
I used to talk to strangers all the time. I made friends on airplanes, in restrooms, at stoplights, and in the produce department. I used to be that girl. Yesterday, we were at the park. A mom nearby put her toddling baby girl down on the ground for her own play time, so I called […]
Tucker performed in the Kindergarten Readers' Theater: The Biggest, Best Snowman. He was a reindeer. He wore antlers, and he 'nudged' the snowball with his reindeer nose as the forest animals made it bigger and bigger. And he delivered the one witty line in the play. Classmate: But how will we get the head on […]
"I smelled your little boy's bottom," Tyler says to another mom at McDonald's. She looks to me. And my mind races with hopefuls that she misunderstood, that she is a woman of grace, that she doesn't think I'm raising a pedophile. Honestly, he's just all boy. They think such audacities are somehow humorous. I rush […]
... Now I didn't care about anything except the fact that he had died and I had not been ready. I had not been done with him. I wanted him to come back for just half an hour, so I could say what I had saved up for another time. For later. - Elizabeth Berg, […]
"Mommy, that song said God is jealous." "Yes, it did." "But jealous is kind of mean." "No, jealous just means, 'I wish you had given to me what you just gave to somebody else.' Like when Tucker plays with another friend, you might feel jealous. When we give more love to someone else or something […]
Tri-fold boards line the hallways, filled with illustrations of hypotheses, experiments, and outcomes. It's Science Fair Season. And I remember how Robb and I high-fived each other on our balanced interests. Our kids had it made: I would help them with reading and writing, and Robb would help them with math and science. Most certainly […]
I've had ten weeks to work on this paper. And I've worked on it for most of the ten weeks. Research, draft, edit, repeat. And now, with 48 hours until it is due, I'm scratching it all and starting over. I don't like what I have. It's not cohesive. It's shifty in focus. The thesis […]
My spirit is light today. How can this be? Only that I am carried on the breaths and prayers of countless. Jesus, let's talk about Tiffany. She wrote to me to say she has found You, committed her life to You - directly as a result of reading my blog. O, the grace confounds me. […]
You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair - the sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You […]
I'll never in my life believe a dollar is wasted in the strengthening of one's personal library. We went shopping at the book fair. Tucker chose The Interrupting Chicken, a very charming story about a chicken who perpetually interrupts the narrator and thereby shifts the ending of the fairy tales we all know. Tyler chose […]
Little boys fascinate me. I mean really, truly fascinate me. They are fearless. Anything seems possible. Anything is worth trying. They are born with an implicit understanding that it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission. If it's fun, let's make it dangerous. Loud is good. Big is better. And if you can turn something small […]
Little by little, I found the beat again, and after that I found the joy again. I came back to my family with gratitude, and back to my work with relief - I came back to it the way folks come back to a summer cottage after a long winter, checking first to make sure […]
Last week, I closed on the refinancing of my home. (Feel free to applaud. Finances are not my forte.) I remembered nine years prior, when Robb and I sat at a similar table, signing our lives away. We were brand new transplants to Colorado, we had made about $250 on the sale of our first […]
Tyler's preschool teacher greeted me yesterday afternoon with a gleam in her eye and an iPhone in her hand. "I just had to show this to you," she said. The children had been playing with letters to build words and sentences, and this is Tyler's finished product. "My mom is a writer."
