-
Watch!
Watch! It’s the constant cry echoing against the walls of our house. Crashing against the trees by the playground. Reverberating off the asphalt on our driveway. Look! And I do. Usually. And I try to remember what that’s like. Someone watching your performance. Watching and grinning and even sometimes clapping. Someone whose eyes are steady on you only. Whose focus is directed on you alone. Not many other things in adult life are like that now, are they? No wonder kids need a mommy and a daddy. No wonder it is a gift both beautiful and rare to feel appreciated and to be loved. Adored. I have been consciously trying…
-
just what I needed to hear.
And sometimes they just say what you need to hear when you need to hear it . . . My sensitive son Bergen Hawkeye came over to me and said, “I like the way God made you.”
-
why the bread was burned
I placed the bread in the oven. As I reached for the timer, I heard a sloshy noise and looked toward the hall. I saw my two-year-old son, soaking wet, standing in the hall making noises and pointing back towards the bathroom. I cautiously approached the scene. The sink’s stopper was pulled. The water was flowing over the edge. Otto had tried to clean up the mess himself with two towels. (I was mildly impressed.) Otto had overflowed the sink with water to wash his big-wheeled trucks. And his shirt. And his socks. And the floor. And somehow the mirror. But hey, he was prepared. I looked at his wee…
-
Found!
We’ve spent hours reading through the rental sections on craigslist and in our local newspaper. We’ve driven down back roads and side roads searching for those little red “for rent” signs. We’ve followed leads and suggestions and compared rental rates and considered mountain homes that were an hour’s drive because the rent was reasonable. Since we began looking for our Next Home we have been praying with the kids about where we would live and encouraging them to pray for that special house out there for our family. Each kid has expressed certain desires for specific features. Those desires have ranged from the practical to the absurd. (You know, wish…
-
mockingbird
If you call my phone (extra points if you remember his name) then you will hear my handy-dandy ring back tone. (Although now Verizon has gone all self-promoting and says something silly like “Please enjoy this Verizon ring back tone.” Makes me want to drop the tone so no one has to hear that commercial.) And that ring back tone is Derek Webb’s song “Mockingbird”. Recently, after hearing the song on my phone, my friend Beth said that whenever she hears the song, she thinks – “But you don’t sound like a mockingbird.” And maybe she was talking about my singing – that’s possible. But I picked the song because…
-
even at the week’s start . . .
I just feel so busy lately. So pressed for time. Stumbling to the bed every night, too tired to wash my face or to finish a chapter of my current novel. Neglecting e-mails and phone calls and forgetting friends’ birthdays and kids’ extra assignments. Not always seeing these little men for the wonders they actually are. Exhausted, yet endlessly feeling as if I somehow did not get enough done. As if I should somehow stay up later, do more, work harder. It has been a tiring season of life. Soccer. School. Preparing for a move. (And by preparing I mean, thinking that I should be preparing, trying to purge possessions…
-
oh, the vanity.
How old do you have to be to stop learning the same lessons? I am thirty-eight years old, people, thirty-eight years old. I had severe acne as a teenager. Severe. Honestly, even the word acne makes me cringe. I do not care for it. But the other words associated with acne are even worse. And I am still struggling with the exact same problem. And it feels so high school. You know, the insecurity? The looking too long in the mirror and assuming everyone else is looking at me and thinking about my face. Ah – the horrendous vanity of that line of thinking. The pride wrapped up even in…
-
when you don’t see the point.
On the road that leads to the field where Mosely plays soccer every week there stands a solitary stop sign. It is not located where a stop sign should be located. There is no apparent rhyme nor reason for this stop sign. No traffic could possibly come from any other direction and it is simply placed in the curve of a road. I don’t know why. I think about that stop sign twice every week. Once when we drive to her game and once when we drive to her practice. I usually come to the classic rolling stop. Silly stop sign. I don’t see the point. There it is –…
-
In Praise of the Wilde One
Otto Fox Wilder is definitely the baby of a family of six children. He has about three mothers and each of those moms has a distinctly different parenting style. But this little man is endlessly entertaining lately. He’s still loud, but he’s funny. He sings along with music we play. Right now his favorite tunes apparently are “Pirate’s Gospel” and Mumford & Sons “The Cave”. He tells the same joke over and over. It goes like this – “Dada!” (Wait for Daddy’s response.) “Ha.Ha.Ha.” Still no progress in the potty training department. (Although being the sixth child, I have learned that, for our house, rushing that skill is not the…
-
all around the campfire.
This weekend we went camping. In a tent, eat food you cook over the fire, camping. No showers all weekend, sleeping outside in a plastic covering with seven other people, camping. We loaded up the supplies, drove to Kentucky, met up with Beth and her girls and even had a drop in visit from Gretchen and her family. And the location for the three of us former college roommates to gather was so apropos. We were merely miles away from our original meeting place, our Alma Mater, Cumberland College. (Now renamed University of the Cumberlands, but I hold a diploma from the first name so I’ll call it whatever the…
-
Book Review: The Help
So I’m late to the party. I just finished reading Kathryn Stockett’s novel The Help. I know, I know already. It’s a movie. It’s in the theatre right now. Oh well, I’ve never been a bandwagon girl. Everyone knows that – right? So maybe I put off reading the book until now. (Actually, I never heard of the book until after it became a movie so I really never made a conscious choice about it in any direction at all.) One sentence: I adored this novel. It made me cry. And maybe I am a glutton for punishment – that is possible – but I love a book that makes…
-
I gave in. It was a glorious defeat.
A couple of months ago someone somewhere told me about this little website called Pinterest. And I said, “Goodness, no. Who has more time to waste on the internets?”” (That’s not a typo. It’s just what I call the internet. Informally, of course. Because me and the internets are chums like that.) Anyway. Despite the fact that these people were trustworthy friends, I declined to pursue the website. And the days ticked by. The months, really. Another batch of reliable friends suggested I would love Pinterest. More days went by. Other friends nudged me on. Eventually, as if you didn’t know the ending to this story already, I caved. I…
-
I concur.
The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest. -Thomas Moore
