Dear twenty-two-year-old me, I see you. It’s September and still muggy in Virginia. Football is in the air, the only sign yet of fall. You’re full of energy for the new year ahead — September always delivered that to you, and you’re glistening...
Today, I share my friend Emily Wierenga with you. This woman has a way with words — she invites you in and before you know it you’re smelling what she’s smelled and feeling what she felt. It’s an honor to have a writer in this space who has...
I flew across the ocean, twice, to grow my family. I invited once-strangers to call me Mommy and made them my own. I fielded all the hurt and anger that comes from four once-broken lives that are now finding mending in my home and sometimes finding me to be an easy...
“Pray for this one,” I told my friends that I knew would pray. It was a subtle drip of negativity coming from this child whose once-orphan wounds had threatened to be scars. Subtle enough that no one bumping up against the world outside our home would see,...
Our birthing room for her was under the open African sky. The smell of burning trash and the sound of wild dogs outside our guest home, her welcome committee. “Daddy” she squealed when she saw us. It was the first word out of her mouth as she put years of...
