God's Pursuit of Me
To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love. - A.W. Tozer
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you can’t call it a mid-life crisis.
I doubt I’m living until I’m 100. (And I’m mostly okay with that.) So I can’t fairly call All The Current Feelings mid-life related. In fact, it is possibly precisely because I recognize that I am no longer mid-life that I am feeling whatever it is I am feeling. Were those sentences helpful? Doubtful. Flannery O’Connor said, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” Same, Flannery. Same. I’ve been waking up in mid-night with these thoughts. I’ve been missing sleep with these thoughts. I’ve been preoccupied with these thoughts. I have a senior again this year. Third row straight. And I’ve been…
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Five Finds Friday (Lost Valley Ranch Version)
We’re home. So many car hours under out belt. I rented a Suburban for this trip (because I didn’t trust my own to make the many thousand mile haul) and therefore I was Solo Driver despite having three teens who have the ability to shoulder the load. (Maybe next year I’ll risk our old Yukon just for the back up drivers.) Anyway, we’re back from the ranch and I’m going to try to share a Lost Valley version of the Five Finds Friday. I’ve thought of that idea for two whole seconds and here I am typing as I think and we’ll all see how it plays out. funny Laughing…
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doing the right thing when the right thing doesn’t seem to work
What we tell our kids: Look for the good.If you can’t find the good, BE the good.Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. We say: Kindness wins.Prefer others above yourselves.Love anyway.Work for the good of others before yourself.Forgive and forgive, as often as it requires.Forgive when your brother keeps yanking your hair or stealing your Legos or leaving their t-shirts in your laundry basket.Think of others first. This is how the world should work. Right actions should begat right results. Sowing generosity should reap the same. And, you know – sometimes it does. Sometimes this exact formula produces kindness and forgiveness and thoughtfulness. Some days the…
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the directions. and where our stories take us.
It hasn’t been tidy. My story. My path to Where I Am Right Now. And, you know, I hope I haven’t “arrived” – whatever that means. I like to think it’s all just a progression, or a steady arriving or a long road to get to the destination that isn’t here on earth. Frankly, whether a long marriage or a devastating divorce, sudden singleness or a lifetime of singleness, I don’t know anyone’s story that is actually tidy. Stories are a mess. They just are. Because people are a mess. We just are. I have friends who have been divorced for less years than me who are happily and joyfully…
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story: listen for it
We’re all telling the same story – aren’t we? Isn’t it the only one that matters? The story of ourselves, sure. The particulars might belong to us. The shading and the scent, the hue and the timing. But it’s never been just our story. It is all of history’s story – all of humanity. The ones before. The ones right now. The ones after. It’s the same story that happened to me more than ten years ago in the mountains of North Carolina in a week long writing class. I was relatively new at my mothering gig – four kids, three under the age of four. My first time leaving…
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five finds friday (there’s beautiful bags and blast from the past soda and kind students)
Hello Friday, my old friend. I don’t want to talk about any words that start with Q or C. There were some gloriously pleasant spring days this week. I’m grateful we’re not jumping directly into scorching days. I think South Carolina often does that so I am thankful that there’s been a tiny delay in that this April. funny This week there was a meteor shower and the kids and I stayed outside lying on the trampoline in the dark for a long time, watching the night sky and joking around. London kept taking terrible photos with the flash and without the flash. The results were pretty amusing. fashionable I’ve…
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sunday matters.
Today the kids and I watched a livestream Easter service in our living room. We had communion and all I had on hand were crackers and sweet tea. I’m 46 years old and for the past 45 years I have spent every Easter Sunday inside of a church or at an early morning sunrise service (because Baptist upbringing). (Except last Easter – remember that?) So yes, this Sunday was different. There have been portions of my life where I attended church because my parents buckled me into the car and drove me there. Seasons where the cute guy in the youth group was my main incentive. College years where I…
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hello out there.
There’s just the one topic right now – right? With all the places and all the things cancelled and postponed, I keep thinking I should end up with time on my hands. My calendar is completely full of white out and yet – I haven’t caught up on any of the things. Not really. It’s been a scramble instead. A scramble to shift classes to some version of online. A scramble to adjust work demands. A scramble to cancel and postpone and rearrange our upcoming literature field trip. To contact all of the locations and lodgings and I still have this feeling that I’m missing something or someone that I…
Keep Reading . . .
try this at home
Five Finds Friday (Lost Valley Ranch Version)
parenting, continued
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an apology/not an apology
I wish I had more time to write here. I wish I had more time to undertake creative endeavors. Why has it been harder to write blog posts for the past six months or so? Overseeing the education of five people requires a LOT of effort. The teenage years provide a plethora of fodder for blog posts but so very little of it is shareable since they are older kids with bigger feelings and stories of their own. Let’s just say, the parenting of teens is a FULL TIME task that hits at the most unexpected hours and in all sorts of dramatic must-respond-immediately sort of ways. My part time…
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holiday tears: doing the best we can
It’s always unexpected. And yet. It’s right on time. It was an average Sunday morning. Not one of our better ones. Call it holiday grumpies or the price of too many late nights or the stress of getting it “all” accomplished, but the atmosphere at our home was anything but cherry and light. Bells weren’t ringing and chestnuts weren’t roasting. Attitudes stunk. I was pretty confident that I was doing my part to raise what might be the world’s most selfish children. I also felt the need to let those children know their trajectory toward that end goal. My sprained ankle made it difficult for me to take a walk…
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five finds friday. (the driving. the giving of thanks. the funny video. the perfect measuring cup.)
I have a friend with as many children as I have who are all at about the same ages as mine. Sometimes when we see one another, we make eye contact and we don’t even have to open our mouths. We just know. Life. Is. Busy. It is full. We spend HOURS of our days in a gas-guzzling tank of a car driving someone to something. It’s where we are. We aren’t complaining. We’re just – tired. It is a literal part time job to drive our prodigy to and fro. It is a line item on the budget to foot the bill for the gas for all the back…
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she’s right, he knows her name.
It was maybe three weeks ago when we woke up to faucets that wouldn’t turn on. Water that wouldn’t flow through our pipes. We didn’t know it at first, but it was an issue with our water pump and we had to replace the entire unit. (Which is hidden deep down inside our well.) That weekend Piper and Otto had gone camping with our friends and they were just returning, all campfire and dirt smelling. Piper wanted a shower. But there was no water at our house. There had been none for hours. She talked about how she just wished there would be enough water for her to take one…
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How We Are All Connected: Navigators. Glen Eyrie. My Mother. Me. My Sons.
It’s a loose story. One that I cannot confirm the extra details to dot the i’s or cross the t’s, but it’s a true story, nonetheless. When my mother was younger, post high school I think, she was involved with a group called the Navigators. Some sort of cross between a Young Life and a Campus Crusade ministry. It’s the organization she credited with helping her to find and to know Jesus. It formed her, spiritually. Shaped her and moved her along the course that she would follow. The course that would make her the sort of mother she was. The sort of wife she was. The sort of human…
