Know God. Live Big.
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
About 10 minutes from my childhood home in Wyoming, you’ll find Sinks Canyon State Park, at the base of the Wind River Mountains. The locals call it “the sinks,” which is actually the name of a unique geological formation (I plagiarized that wording from the park website) where the raging waters of the Popo Agie River vanish underground. I don’t… Read More
Let’s start with the Chinese food that I heated up in the microwave for lunch on Saturday. When I pulled out the plate, a piece of rice exploded and landed inside my nostril, burning me until I could retrieve it. There were no witnesses, but who could possibly make up such a thing? Then there was my attempt to caulk… Read More
We were slouched on the couch, in a jet-lag stupor, when he leaned over to me and said, “You know what?” I let my weary head swing his direction. “What?” “Israel was great and everything, but I feel like I didn’t get to spend any time with the Lord while I was there.” “Seriously?” I answered. “I’ve been feeling… Read More
My last teaching job was in 1994. When I re-entered the teaching field a few years ago, I noticed teachers were talking about a new-fangled tool called a rubric. What in the world was a rubric? So I used “the Google” (something else that didn’t exist in 1994) and learned a rubric is a chart that describes expectations for an… Read More
It seems old fashioned now, but my family used to go to prayer meeting. A generous handful of us would exchange warm, family-style greetings and then get cozy in the church pews. Then people would start making prayer requests. Somebody would ask us to pray for their aunt who was having surgery. Somebody else would ask us to pray that… Read More
Confession: My 30-year high school reunion was this week, and I did not go. Horrible person? Vote in. I saw the names of classmates come up on the reunion Facebook page, but I just kept thinking that after 30 years I don’t know any of these people. They don’t know me. A group of them went past me, on a… Read More
If you’re willing the clock to get to the end of the class period, that is a very bad situation. But I was one teacher who had come into the hour unprepared. This was partly due to fatigue, partly due to Friday short-timer’s disease, and partly due to plain old procrastination. (I would like the record to show that I… Read More
It was 7:45 a.m., and everyone in Kalispell was trying to get to their posts for the day. I came to the stop sign at the south end of Helena Flats road and waited for someone to close the gate, so that I could take a right onto the highway. (I was a teenager when I finally figured out that… Read More
For over a decade, our friends have run a summer Christian camp on an Indian reservation just to the east of Glacier National Park. A few days ago, Matt and I made the two-hour road trip through Glacier Park, to visit the camp. It’s a breathtaking property, with over 100 different kinds of wild flowers growing among the grasses, backed… Read More