Story
One can bear anything if one can put it in a story. - Isak Dinesen
-
there is no time machine
Being at Allume a few weekends ago, being there around so many women, their conversations were peppered with what is true in their lives. Words like “And then I discussed this with my husband…” or “My husband told me I should …..” “And that’s when my husband looked and at me and suggested …” And I don’t know these people. I don’t know their stories. I don’t know if this is their sixteenth husband – or their first – I don’t know if they are truthful women or liars. I don’t know. It doesn’t even matter. But, if I am being honest, it hurt to hear all that talk. It…
-
direction.
You mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks.” I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions. — Wendell Berry
-
Attending Allume
“How’s it going so far?” That was the text from my friend. It being the Allume conference I was attending this last weekend. I laughed. (Yep. A real laugh that was sort of a hiccup but was very much made out loud.) How’s it going? Well. I knocked over a chair. My chocolate covered almond slid across the floor. I couldn’t get my tongue to agree with my brain when I opened my mouth to speak. I felt intimidated by the myriad of professional looking women laughing and having conversations all around me in the lovely Hyatt hotel lobby. The snacks were cooler than I was. You guys. I have…
-
beautiful & terrible
Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. Frederick Buechner I live in a farmhouse that is over one hundred years old. Things fall apart. Ancient dirt rises from the splintery wooden floors. What starts out as white, seldom stays white. But in this dusty home abide five of the most interesting humans I have ever known. There is a six-year-old with his filthy boy feet resting right on top of my clean pillow. He stops me, mid-sentence, all the day long to profess his love for me. Not even an hour usually passes without kisses and hugs and back pats from my Wilde…
-
marriage, that old couple
I still believe in marriage. Is that a weird thing to say? I still believe in the picture of Christ’s love for His people that marriage represents. In fact, I believe in it more today than I did last year. If marriage was entirely for our own individual glory or pleasure, if the picture of marriage was to bring honor to ourselves alone, then my story – and countless others’ stories – would be playing out so differently and would matter so much less. Recently I saw an older couple sit down together in church across the aisle from where I sat. He put his arm around her shoulder. Leaned…
-
leaky tire. leaky life.
The Suburban’s back right tire has a slow leak. (As if having 258,000 miles wasn’t problem enough. Also the leather is torn right where my left leg hits every single day. There’s this weird continual dampness in the back right and I have to remind myself never to store my suitcase there on trips. And it smells like feet. Stinky stink Keen kid feet. But I should mention here – I still love that old ride.) I fill the tire with air. (You might already know how much I dislike the gas pumps. I feel pretty much the same way about the air stations.) (Why is it so hard to…
-
wisdom from harper lee
I made myself reread Harper Lee’s famous novel To Kill A Mockingbird this summer before I would allow myself to begin her summer release of Go Set a Watchman. (And no, sadly, I have not finished the new novel yet. I’m just so slow at reading books these days. My nights are busy and my days are busy and my brain cells are busy and well, you get my point.) There is just so much good in that first novel though. So much quote worthy. So much courage and so much strength of character. So much solid classic that is that original story of Scout and Atticus and Jem and Boo.…
-
that time at the park when the wheels came undone
We’ve never really lived in a house with a concrete driveway that leant itself to safe bike riding for children. Therefore, the kids have always been late comers to the biking world. Piper Finnian still needs training wheels. And that’s alright with me. Recently, Bergen outgrew his bike and we realized it was a good fit for Piper. I bought some training wheels. Universal, the bag side. Fits any bike, the instructions read. With the training wheels attached and the bikes painstakingly crammed in the back of the Suburban, we drove to a large parking lot to practice before trying to hit the trail together. Otto is grinning and riding…
-
not as you’d think
It seems there should be a time when sorrow ends. When a door can close and an official Time of Death can be stamped. Mirrors hung with black fabric and all the clocks stopped. The End. All announced and definitive. Relationships don’t end that way though, do they? All trimmed up and tidy. Containable and compartmentalized. I’ve never been witness to such a happening. Instead it’s a feet-dragging-coming-in-through-the-back-door-I-thought-I-already-grieved-this-new-every-season kind of endless goodbye.
-
in defense of female friendships . . .
So there’s this part of me that’s afraid of friendships with women. You guys, I have been so burned before. Stack one time on top of another, on top of that, and I’m telling you – I know what the pain of betrayal and broken relationship feels like. Oh – it’s the bitterest of pills to swallow. It stings. It scars. It stays. And I have certainly spent my fair share of time avoiding close community with females. If I am wary, trust me when I say I have my reasons. Yes, I am forty-two years old and I’ve got mounds left to learn, but I’ve also learned a little…
-
thriving in captivity: the story of an exile
Today this phrase – this piece of a sentence – was spoken to me. Thrive in captivity. And I can’t stop thinking about it. What does that mean? How does one do that? What does that look like? It’s a garden in prison. You know? A flower box inside a jail cell. It’s being a slave but not losing hope. It’s like being a foreigner but not being forsaken. The idea really captures me. And my language here might be a mix and a jumble of both my words and my thoughts and her prompting and her questioning and I hope that doesn’t qualify as plagarizing…
-
words.
There are so many words I need to say. And I can’t say. Or words I want to say. But I shouldn’t say. It’s a jumble up here in my brain most all of the time. My days just don’t look like they used to. (I should win a prize for making understatements.) My heart cries out every day – “How long O Lord – how long?” How long will you listen to my young children repeat the same prayers, word for word, night after night? It has been vital to me during this season of suffering to tell myself truths. To say them out loud. Not to wait until I believe…
-
Monday Night
It’s surreal how one weekend can change your life. How one afternoon all that you think is true can be swept away in a singular collosal wave and you find yourself stranded on an unfamiliar shore. More than one month has passed since what was Unthinkable has become what is Every Day. Crisis is a confusing beast. It makes time stand still and somehow at the same but the opposite rate it makes time evaporate. Basically, it shoves your agenda into the trash and brings lots of life into painful clarity.
