Know God. Live Big.
I painted for nine hours on Monday –Sherwin-Williams’ Cloverdale gray. The Lord gifted me with a cool, overcast day in the middle of August, and I wasn’t about to waste it. In mid afternoon, after about six hours of painting, two neighbor ladies passed by the house on their walk. “Hey, that looks like fun!” they said. “Yeah, fun,” I… Read More
Grandma occasionally went to the newspaper office and asked for scrap paper end pieces. In the days before sticky notes, this was the paper she used to make grocery lists and to leave notes on the door, for campers in the camper court, that promised when she would be returning to her office (a.k.a., kitchen). I used to beg to… Read More
I sat down at the computer last week and wrote the very exciting email to you, that my third book just hit the presses. Woohoo! Except I wanted to insert an image of the book into the email and soon hit a brick wall of ignorance. The image was on my Google drive and I needed it somewhere else. Depending… Read More
If you want to see me, Christy Fitzwater, in the place where I feel most comfortable in my own skin, most joyful, and most authentic, then you’re going to have to sit in on my Wednesday night class when I teach children the Bible. I’ve been trying to dissect why that half an hour with third and fourth graders feels… Read More
My principal set the page filled with student comments in front of me, and we walked through them together. Students had taken an anonymous survey about teachers, and at the end they were able to write freely any comments or criticisms they had about each teacher. There were some pretty nice comments on my sheet, and I liked those. But… Read More
It had to happen. Our school is busting at the seams, and I’m just a part-time teacher who more easily can be inconvenienced for a few hours of my day. So it’s back to the tiny room, in which I’ve taught for four of my six years. This room is the size of a nursing home room, because it used… Read More
“Do you hear that?” he asked. But I was in full stress mode, as a teacher coming back after taking three vacation days. The stack of papers to be graded was growing Everest size in my imagination, and I wondered what the subs had done versus the instructions I had left. So I wasn’t really listening to his concerns about… Read More
“You’re taxes are done,” she said over the phone. Cue fight-or-flight reaction. I was terrified about our taxes this year (as opposed to just being afraid the other years.) Our circumstances had changed drastically, in addition to the new tax law changes. We had made adjustments to our quarterly tax payments, but in my wildest imagination, I pictured the accountant… Read More
It was the fall of 1983, when computers were still a twinkle in their mother’s eye. I was a freshman sitting in typing class, and it was my first experience putting my fingers on what we now call a keyboard. Every day we did drills: left fourth finger up to the W. Right fourth finger up to the O. Right… Read More
Sometimes I think I should rename my website, “Anxiety Girl.” Here I am again today, with my latest installment about worrying and what has been helping me overcome this lately. Let’s start with the worries and how real they are: Money and old cars and old houses and old bodies. Grown kids. Kids needing jobs. Kids and their money and… Read More