Story
One can bear anything if one can put it in a story. - Isak Dinesen
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kindness is contagious
I am not certain about all that many things in life. (It’s such a shifting world. Off balance and out of kilter by mid-morning most days.) But I do know this: We have a bounty of friends much kinder than we deserve to have. It’s a special kind of lovely to come home to an empty house after a trip and to see that Love visited while we were gone. Delicious cinnamon rolls awaiting on the counter. Apples on the table and orange juice in the fridge and a breakfast ready for the next morning – because everyone knows after a trip the cupboards are bare and your resourcefulness…
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the divorce diaries – entry 6
I am living in this tension between two cultures – two ideas of right and wrong and normal and broken. This wild and difficult juxtaposition between the views of divorce. On the one hand, you have: The Huffington Post Facebook Television Movies Your second cousin And all of these sources tackle the topic of divorce in about the exact same way: This is just the way it is. It’s normal. Cut out the toxic people in your life. You deserve to be happy. You need to take care of you first. Be your own boss. Follow your heart. The kids will be fine. Monogamy is outdated. Kids are resilient.…
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the divorce diaries. entry 4.
I find it bizarre (unsettling) how a title, a life, an entire thing can happen to you, be legitimately forced upon you and your only choice is to survive or to die. The label is there. boom. I’m sure there are loads of areas where this is true, but I don’t think I’ve fallen under many of them before personally and none so traumatic and dramatic as the hurricane that has been divorce. Even typing it hurts my fingertips. I can sincerely say that it feels as if divorce has happened upon me. Has happened to me. Like a disease. Like a terrible medical prognosis. Like a death. And…
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I don’t have a pocket to place this bit.
How are we all supposed to live with the stuff we said? The things we promised but didn’t follow through? The bits like this, said in my own voice at my own wedding —- For better or for worse. Until death do us part. Where you go, I will go. Your people will be my people. May the Lord deal with me be it ever so severely if anything but death separates you and I. _________________________
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wonder.
“Mom,” she calls my name. Bedtime closing in. “Would you like to sit outside with me and Otto and look at the stars? We can wrap up in blankets.” (Because the temperature was nearly 60 degrees after all.) I would like to do that. I can think of nothing better to do right now, as a matter of fact. And I tell her so. We turn out the porch lights. Quietly walk to the steps. Take our places in silence and then we look up. We look at the stars. At Orion’s Belt and twinkling planes. I love any piece and part of nature that reminds me that I am small…
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Messy Middles
The Messy Middles. It’s a phrase a couple of sweet friends and I use in our daily/weekly/whenever text thread we have going on. It’s an idea. A feeling. A verbal picture of where we think we find ourselves right now. Or always. The Messy Middle. The life we lived before this very day, this very instant, is all pretty clearly defined. The Past. It already happened. All the cliches are accurate – You can’t go back. There’s no fixing the past. What’s done is done. Yesterday is yesterday. And so on …. So there you have it. (Actually, I take issue with the concept that “you can’t fix the…
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A Poem by Another Writer
I’ve read this poem over and over and finally decided that it is just too good not to share. (I think you appreciate it more with each read – so try it a few times.) __________________ Ode on the Whole Duty of Parents by Frances Cornford The spirits of children are remote and wise, They must go free Like fishes in the sea Or starlings in the skies, Whilst you remain The shore where casually they come again. But when there falls the stalking shade of fear, You must be suddenly near, You, the unstable, must become a tree In whose unending heights of flowering green Hangs every fruit…
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. . . when vomit drew me closer to Jesus
When I say Otto was sick this week, I mean the poor little guy was for reals sick. He counted each time he threw up. I didn’t realize he was keeping track. There he was, little silver bowl in hand, emptying his stomach contents. “Nine,” he stated. Nine times. It wiped him out. It wiped me out. And it took my sheets out too. But whatever. London was sick all night. Otto started in early early morning after I had stolen a few hours of rest. While cleaning up Otto I heard footsteps racing across the upstairs hallway. Bergen was joining the sick ranks. If you’re counting that is…
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every hour
The day is done but in Many Ways it has just started. I’m sitting down in that half way attire of the nighttime. Pajama pants, shirt from the day, earrings off, feet tucked up under myself at the kitchen table. Dishwasher humming, Ryder asleep on the threshold, the spiral notebooks with tomorrow’s school lists stacked to my left not quite ready for the students to do their work but I know they need to be before the pillow greets me. I don’t know where I am supposed to be in life but I’ve got a decent handle on where I actually am. The house is basically tidy and that…
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What The Lizard Did
He changed colors right in their hands. Brown, dirty looking. He jumped from my right Chuck Taylor to my left. Caught immediately in his escape, he stopped being brown. Just stopped being the one color and started being another color. The mysteries of nature I cannot begin to comprehend. _______________________________
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What To Tell Your Friends When They Tell You Their Marriage Is Broken
Maybe I’ll be writing about stuff I don’t want to write about until the day I die. That’s probably kind of true. Last month I wrote a post about Helping Your Friends Through Sad Stuff. You guys – why is there always SO MUCH sad stuff? If it isn’t in the news (and it is ALWAYS in the news) then it’s on your living room sofa and at the coffee shop and it’s showing up in your gmail account and dripping into you phone via text and emoticons. A lot of bad stuff goes down. At church last weekend there were some guys wearing t-shirts that said “share your…
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. . . being left
The Heavy is actually not so much the literal parenting alone, although that has a weight indeed. But it is more the colossal burden of being the Left Behind. Different than the Scarlet A worn on the chest. In our culture that red letter carries so little weight. So little shame. It feels more difficult to wear the letters that spell Unlovable. Not Worth Saving. It’s not so much Being Alone as it is being Left Alone. ______________________________
Keep Reading . . .
Noonday: Tonight!
and there’s a video
Five Finds Friday (teen drivers. the first egg.)
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You Tell Me
When I ask God why all of these injustices are allowed to exist in the world, I can feel the Spirit whisper to me, “You tell me why we allow this to happen. You are my body, my hands, my feet.” – Shane Claiborne _________________________________
