Know God. Live Big.
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 of Hallmark movies for a… Read More
The twist cone is my favorite. I would never order plain vanilla, but it’s a nice compliment to chocolate. These days I’m thinking about how sorrow and joy squeeze out of the same spigot and come served to us always intertwined. Last week my son gave a sparkly to his girl, and now my husband and I are whispering joyfully… Read More
So this is what it means to be rich, I think to myself, as the attendant takes my gift card and I pull into the Blue Cow Car Wash. The young guys give my dirty Montana car a good spray down, and then I put my car in neutral and let the magic happen. As I roll out the other… Read More
It was a mistake I became aware of too late –taking the inside ordering lane at McDonald’s. The people on the outside track can pull straight forward to pay at the window, but the drivers on the inside have to work to merge. I ordered a crispy chicken snack wrap and a yogurt parfait and then waited for the other… Read More
Beautiful day yesterday. Students hardworking, skies clear, temperature 74 degrees. And then one check-engine light, one large medical bill in the mail, and one lawn mower blowing smoke and dripping black. Cue: deflation. I stopped to recognize that inside me is a central hope that life will get more pleasant and not more difficult. Hope that a check will come… Read More
We had been in the ER since 3:00 a.m. The nurse had called, from my brother-in-law’s cell phone, to tell us he had been in a head-on collision (we found out later the other drive had been drunk.) We got dressed in a daze and raced to the hospital. Luke was relatively okay, except for a face full of minor… Read More
Rarely do I get headaches, but I think I’d been stressed over the last few weeks, which led to shoulder scrunching and a grand finale of muscle knots. While the house was quiet on Saturday, I talked to God about this stress –trying to get to the root of it. Landing on the word fear, I acknowledged that I run… Read More
Going old school today, with a spiral notebook and my favorite Paper Mate pen. I’ve tucked myself away in my bedroom -ceiling fan creating white noise. The page is blank, and it is Monday. Nothing written. No words yet. No scratched out lines because the first attempt didn’t sound quite right. Soon my life will roll across the day the… Read More
Last week, Spanish class was awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, not so hot. My students made me want to weep with their success on more than one occasion. They really made some great advancements. Then came Friday and what I thought was going to be a super easy matching vocab test, but they didn’t impress me so much. “Oh man, we… Read More
Well, has your December calendar worn you out yet? If you’re coming into Christmas tired of soul, here’s a word of encouragement that I wrote a few years ago. It just needed some dusting off, and I think the message still fits. Merry Christmas to you, dear friend. Merry Christmas. I like a thick ream of blank, white copy paper… Read More