Blog

It was on the same day the baby was born that I sat with her. Her body had been drained, almost all the life she thought she had was poured out into 7 pounds of flesh that had her eyes and his chin. She was a mother now. In mere hours of labor she’d inherited a...

At age eleven, I used my flash light to speak in morse code to Allison Noe across the back-yard -- from my window to hers -- after the sun had set and it was bedtime. Daylight wasn't enough for this friendship between dreamers. We choreographed dances during the day,...

Before December 22, 2008 I had been acquainted with a kind of pain that feels like those days of drizzle, when fall is molting its leaves and inheriting winter's bite. The pain of infertility hung low and impacted my view and my time -- it droned on and almost became...

How many times have I said it -- thought it? This: "I’ll find Him when life slows down or this burden lifts or I have more time." It's not just the lie of motherhood or of my college days or of the first-few-months-in-a-new job or of the five months before my own...

Five years ago, today, my dad went home ... And as this story goes out to the world tomorrow, this is what I would say to him. Dear Dad, I once heard a set of parents say that they wanted their ceiling to be their children's floor. If you'd heard that, too, you would...

For many years, authors were my mentors. Though they were not my only teachers, these ones -- some long-dead and others, grayhaired sages of the faith --taught me with their lives. Their stories curled up with me late into the night and and on rainy afternoons when my...

I thought about you on my morning run: You, in your twenties and full of life and zeal and expectation -- who still goes home to yourself, at night, or rolls over, awake, next to your husband (who's already conked) with a sprinkling of thoughts that plague the...

I discovered a new mark on the wall, minutes after remembering that the cabinet door was severed from its hinges by the weight of a child who had used it as a stepping stool. Another thing I had not yet added to my honey-do list. My mind dove from a visionary focus to...

As life wove itself around the undergirding story of my barrenness, I couldn’t always tell what might send me right back to the dull ache or sharp pain of my lack, though baby showers seemed consistently to take me to that place. Why do I do this to myself? I wondered...

She wore fur-lined boots with her t-shirt and shorts on this 100-degree summer day. She filed in alongside her schoolmates -- who were also house-and-home mates -- under the florescent lights of this pseudo-gymnasium room with cement walls, where we met. Every month...