He was my younger brother, and then one day he was my hero. Mom was suddenly alone five years ago when dad passed away on a snowmobile in Wyoming. I couldn’t breathe in the night thinking about it. We lived 12 hours away, and phone calls every week seemed empty in the face of so…
I’ve been a little teary over the last few weeks. Mom and I were talking about it, as we come up on the fifth anniversary of my dad going to be with Jesus. “It’s not the anniversary that’s getting to me,” I said to her. “It’s what I see happening in my own life.” My…
Way back in the day, I was our church pianist, and my husband sang in the choir. That left our two grade school-aged children alone on the front row during the music time every Sunday. This was slightly terrifying. The piano I played was a shiny black upright, which offered a perfect reflection of the…
Never make friends with anyone who is braver than you are. I remember our “little yellow house,” as we call it now. I had prayed for nothing more than big windows, and the living room had three picture windows in it. It was my dream come true. Of course, the house was old and boasted…
Matt came home in the 4:00 hour, which means we had to catch him up on our Hallmark movie plot. “You’re not going to believe this,” I said to him, “But this girl has gone to a country that ends in “-ovia” and has fallen in love with a prince who is about to be…
“Give me the estimate and let me see if I’m still breathing after I see it,” I said to the carpet guy at Home Depot. We were going to have to replace all of the carpet in our rental house. Slowly he turned the monitor and pointed to the number. “Okay then,” I said calmly….
For Christmas, we all chipped in and got Aunt Noanie a rocking chair and ottoman. The men went to work putting the chair together, even though Luke said he wouldn’t help if it required an Allen wrench, and it did. (He was all talk.) While they worked, I took the chair padding out of the…
One thing I’ve loved (and hated) about the principal I work for is that he has really pushed me to do important things in teaching that I have not wanted to do. If I had been left on my own over these last five-plus years, I never would have grown so much in confronting students…
It was a little over one year ago that we quietly started having the conversation about how we could best serve my husband’s mom and aunt. His mom is a widow, and she and her sister (who is single) have lived together in a house for a few decades now. It was getting hard for…
Did I ever tell you about the Judean hills Matt and I saw outside of Jerusalem? They came with real live bedouins leading sheep. “See those circles?” our guide said. Yes, we had noticed the spirals going around each hill and had wondered about the unique geology. “Those are paths that have been worn over…
Two things happened on Saturday, December 1st: I woke up hyperventilating about all there was TO DO and how much it was going TO COST and how many people there were TO MAKE HAPPY. Matt and I walked to the window, as the sun was just coming up. “Snow!” I said. Big flakes were softly…
You know what I was doing at 4:45 last evening? Setting the flameless candles. At 2:30 I rushed home from school, changed into work clothes, and started pulling Christmas boxes out of the crawl space. (By the way, I took two ibuprofen before going to bed, because it’s not smart to go from watching hours…
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