When we were cleaning out Mom’s kitchen, I found a slip of carefully folded paper in one of the drawers. Along with tape and batteries and notepads and address booklets, she had kept something from when I was 7 years old. In second grade, they apparently gave my class placement and IQ tests, and my… Continue reading The Lessons Keep Coming
My mind isn’t working quite like usual. When I step aside, and look at myself objectively, I can see that. I can see myself wanting to join into conversations but being a step off. I can see myself having to bring my attention back to a task again and again. I can see myself just not being myself. It’s like… Continue reading Maybe this is Grief
Two weeks ago today, we were holding Mom’s graveside service. I looked at the calendar and did a few mental calculations to be sure it was then, because it feels like it could have been just yesterday, or maybe a year ago. Time has taken on that strange, erratic behavior that time has during crisis… Continue reading Do Not Think About the Loss
That’s the joy of no-longer-kids. After years of scanning the shelves – looking past the self-centeredness of childhood, trying not to scrutinize the morass of adolescence too closely, blinking in surprise at the fledgling adult emerging – you realize that the person standing before you IS exactly what you were looking for.
In July 2001, Tim McGraw had a hit single called “Angry All the Time.” It was from his Set This Circus Down album, and it was a cover of a song originally written and recorded by Bruce Robison in 1998. The song was about a marriage falling apart. A man remembering the woman he loved,… Continue reading In the Words of a Country Music Song
I was on vacation the first time I tasted popovers. They looked like extra tall muffins with inflated tops, and they were still warm from the oven, served with butter and jam. They were a revelation. I come from a people of dense and solid breads – banana bread, biscuits, cornbread – and I deeply… Continue reading It’s Not About the Popovers
Twenty-five years ago this month, I became a mother. I’ve never done anything else in my life that was so instantaneously earth-shattering. The memories of that first year are a mixture of hours and days that flew by in an exhausted blur, and moments that seem etched on my mind – holding her as she… Continue reading Show Her the Way Home
I’ve been teaching a class of 2nd-5th graders on Sunday morning for the past few months. The class takes place at the same time as our regular church service because we haven’t had actual class time in over a year. Like every other congregation this past year, ours has been turned on its head. But… Continue reading Adventures in Sunday School
I would especially like to remember the first time I heard the story of the crucifixion and resurrection. Or more precisely, remember the first time I understood what those words meant.
This winter has been a long one, a bitterly cold one – colder than I remember us having in quite some time. And the past twelve months have been long and bitter months. Colder and more bitter than many of us have ever known. Full of confusion. Full of fear. Full of sadness. It’s been… Continue reading Spring is Coming
