Blog
Confessions of a Suburban Mom – Part Two
In "Confessions of a Suburban Mom - Part One" I confess to raising our sons in a safe, secure environment, what I perceive as too sheltered of a life, blocking out a broken world. Today's post picks up where the last post ended. As I ate dinner with a dear friend to...
Confessions of a Suburban Mom – Part One
While writing my suburban mom confession, I need to confess to writing a long and unwieldy blog post. Whenever you combine suburban guilt and mother guilt, things get complicated, so I’m making this a two-part post. This is my confession: I chose to raise my four...
Birthday Reflections: Waiting and Continuing
I turn another year older today, another year closer to a very big number that ends in zero arriving in 2018. We’ll hold off talking about that birthday until next year. All wrapped up in my birthday package this year comes the surprise fact that getting older gets...
A New Novel Worth Persusing
Debut author Katherine James' discomfort with self-promotion has led her to share photos of dogs on social media promoting her new book. But some of us who deeply enjoy and respect her writing feel it's worth helping her out with a human voice. 🙂 In her novel, Can...
So Much Sky
An excerpt from my empty nest essay, appearing in the latest issue of "Under the Sun" literary journal. The note appears hooked to the knob of my front door, a warning. The emerald ash borer disease has ravaged the hundred-year-old stately ash trees lining our road,...
Spoken Blessings
Today I have the privilege of writing over at The Mudroom blog, "a place for stories emerging in the midst of the mess." When my twin sons accidentally caught 17-acres of land on fire while filming a World War II movie with their high school friends, it wasn’t the...
Homesick
Our family loves to drive past our old homes in Massachusetts and Virginia, trying to catch a glimpse and a memory of the rooms we once inhabited, the place where we loved and laughed, cried and fought. We critique the changes the new owners made, wonder why they...
A Year Without the Internet
“This is a story about going all still and quiet—and how that changes you.” ...
Interview with Author Catherine McNiel
Recently Catherine McNiel published her first book, Long Days of Small Things: Motherhood as a Spiritual Discipline (NavPress, 2017). Catherine's fresh, wise perspective and beautiful language stood out in a culture where books on motherhood...
How Do You File Memories?
These four walls, painted quiet green to invite calm, hold so many memories in drawers and on shelves, telling the story of a life through its contents. A much needed cleaning, purging and organization finally took place last week, drawing out forgotten moments and...
Review of The Year of Small Things
The older I get, the more I find myself hungry for a simple, downwardly-mobile, radical lifestyle, one that honors and cares for the least of these and the hurting, and one that finds my husband and me living in strong community with other people of faith. I also...
Well-Acquainted with Grief
“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop on the heart until, against our will, in our own despair, comes wisdom from the awful grace of God.” ~ Aeschylus I collect certain people. Pack them into life’s travel bag, looking them up at the first...