Category: Grace
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Pink Scrunchie
On my 40th birthday, grinning and in love with life, I slipped in the mud and fell on my ass. Okay, fine; it wasn’t actually my ass; it was my hip and leg and chest — my entire right side caked in mud from the impact of hitting the slimy, muddy hill intent on ruining […]
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Splinter
Jacob ran out the front screen door, exclaiming, “Christmas wreath!” in his two-year-old toddlerese. It was early December in Hawaii and the wreath I had picked up at the local Target was our lone Christmas decoration. With a deployed husband, two small children, and an upcoming holiday trip to my parents’ house on the mainland, […]
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The Last Thing I Wanted to Do
It rattles softly at the window like the fingers of a child as I sit on the edge of the tub to tie my shoes. It comes down the glass in crooked paths to stir my heart absurdly as it always has, and dear God in Heaven, the sound of it on the roof, on […]
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I Can’t Live on Bread Alone
This week I reworked an old post from October 2013, which was shared on All In this morning. May it bring you hope, as it did for me, as I recalled the events of that fall. I am a bibliophile. I could spend all day in a bookstore, leafing through pages, inhaling that sweet aroma, running […]
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Treasure Where the Home Fire Burns
Eleven years ago today my family watched a fire destroy our home. I wrote this piece a few years later and today I share it in honor of the lessons God began to teach me as I watched the flames wreck a house so full of memories. Mom and I are sitting in the den […]
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Friendship For All Seasons
I walked through the chilly evening dark and got into the car without a diaper bag. I turned on music that I like – which at this point is anything that’s not songs from Sesame Street – and I headed out to visit a friend and watch The Bachelor. As the pregnant mom of a […]
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Survivor Mama: New Life after Sexual Assault
Today I am seven years a survivor. So grateful to the Good Mother Project for publishing this piece yesterday. It’s time to use my voice again. It’s time to speak the truth. When I got pregnant, I didn’t realize I was a rape survivor. Mere hours after my son was conceived, I sat in our counselor’s […]
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If you want to know who you are, watch your feet
“Thus, when you wake up in the morning, called by God to be a self again, if you want to know who you are, watch your feet. Because where your feet take you, that is who you are.” – Frederick Buechner, Alphabet of Grace This isn’t a fun post to write, which is a bit […]
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Man doesn’t live on bread alone
Our books are still in boxes. Usually, when I set up a new living space, my books are the first to be unpacked. I like to touch each one, pause; if there’s time, I open a few of the pages and read a few lines. Meditate on words once read, underlined, starred, recalling back to […]