Let me preface this article by saying that I just took a personal assessment that described me as being someone who always starts with the question, “What is the right thing to do?” Funny, because I said those exact words to Matt before we went to sleep last night. I said, “I so desperately need…
I paid $15.00 for a three-shelf unit for our garage. It was light enough that I could carry the box home in one hand. When I opened it and slid out the parts, there were several bags of varying kinds of pipes and screws labeled A through J. Seriously? I had to lay it all…
How did this white Montana girl end up on the equator in Uganda? Only by God’s design. But there I was, with my midwinter pale skin (which I refer to as “morgue white” when shopping for makeup), flying into the airport in Entebbe, Uganda: my first time to be in the minority. First let me…
There’s a beautifully crafted, wooden peace pipe hanging above my father’s desk. Dad was an engineer for an oil company, and he worked with a lot of Native Americans on the oil field. It’s extremely unheard of, for a Native American to gift a peace pipe to a white man, but one fellow employee respected…
Last year at this time, I was buying slate-blue house paint, along with brushes, and rollers. I learned how to caulk between siding gaps. Then I set up on the front porch of my mother-in-law’s house and did the first cutting in. Six weeks later, I finished painting the entire house (minus the top portions,…
It was a Sunday afternoon, in the middle of March, when the email came for which I had been holding my breath, telling all of us teachers that we would be transitioning immediately to remote teaching. The next day we met solemnly at school, a chair space between each of us, to hear the action…
The gate was just to keep people who lived farther up the mountain from using our road. It was nothing but a single metal bar, and we knew it was high enough to drive under. I can’t count how many times I sailed underneath that gate in my Ford Taurus. Until one day I was…
How are we doing, everybody? Matt and I went to Lowe’s for a lawn mower spark plug on Sunday, him and me in face masks. Someone at church made them for us. I jokingly said, “Make sure his fabric works for a pastor.” She chose black skulls and flowers for him, if you need a…
Whew, I was Anne of Green Gables there for a bit, in the depths of despair. The world shut down, I moved to teach online school overnight, and an unwelcome fear and cynical hopelessness snuck up on me. As Anne says of despair, “It’s a very uncomfortable feeling indeed. When you try to eat a…
Saturday is always grocery day. In the morning, I go to the pantry with my cell phone and start filling in my three Google Keep lists with what we need from Costco, the grocery store, and the department store. Then I go out to the garage, where we keep paper products (a more valuable commodity…
I called one of the seniors from my Spanish class yesterday. Once I had explained that she wasn’t in trouble and we had a laugh about it, I said, “I’m sorry. I just called to say I’m sorry.” The end of senior year is when a student is supposed to be enjoying all of the…
I’m tempted to use the word “flabbergasted,” except I don’t think the cool kids are saying that these days. It describes how I felt on January 1st of this year, when I began my new role as women’s ministry director for our church and began another challenging project that I’m not at liberty to talk…
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