We’ve enjoyed receiving the picture cards from our friends around the country, counting blessings and finding the joy of this ______ year. This impossible, unprecedented, ridiculous, frustrating, agonizing, surprising, miraculous year. For the first time in decades, I haven’t had the mental ability to create one of our epic family collage storytelling cards for 2020. Literally it turned into a…
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Somehow my life has always been this way. My world is filled with a lot of people – smart, wise people – who land on all different points on all the spectrums of ideological thought and life-journey decisions. I know many loving, dedicated people who have considered deeply the ways to prioritize the factors of their own life and make…
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I’ve always placed a high value on smiling; a smile is good for the universe. Our own smile can cure so many ills, and even can predict our lifespan. (what??) And without a doubt, it makes the day brighter for everyone (admit it). This week I’m traveling through airports for the first time in many months and one of my…
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I am terrible at secrets. If there’s a surprise planned, my kids have generally learned that I should only be told what is safe to leak, which I would offer is strategically helpful for the sophisticated surprise planner. I’m an open book, unless it’s a matter of privacy or there’s an NDA somewhere. In broad terms, I’ve become a freak…
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It’s pretty natural for me to rationalize bad behavior; I perfected this craft in my 20’s. A lost temper, a little white lie, an extra drink, a third cookie, a nap. Wait, I never napped in my 20’s, but there may be a few more I’ve erased from memory. In my first marriage, I rationalized my angst over my flawed…
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by Suzy Sammons “Narrative is our culture’s currency; he who tells the best story wins.” — Bobette Buster As Christians we follow the greatest storyteller of all time. Jesus of Nazareth taught a small band of disciples, and changed the world with stories that delivered radical messages of love and transformation. As His modern followers we have worked hard to do…
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Physiologically speaking, our bodies are miracles of growth and healing. When we get a cut on our finger, the white blood cells in our body rush to the site to increase cell production and heal the injury. This is a simple metaphor for community, right? The advanced science of our physical make-up is often relatable to the needs we have…
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It is my nemesis, this unwritten book. The wild story that might not sound polished and eloquent. It may upset Catholics and Evangelicals alike. My siblings might think I’m not being fair to my father, or too dramatic and I understand their point of view. My story may upset people who don’t realize the “before” me, and think I’m betraying…
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When you go from non-stop, always-on, packing-unpacking, carpooling and juggling, to this, it feels like a jolt. The slamming stop of a rollercoaster, and we’re all on it in our own little cars, looking around making sure everyone’s ok. Often when we take a vacation, it always takes a few days to really get unplugged and focused on the “just…
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Christmas Day 2019 One Husband, one Ex-Husband, Three Millennials with a Z-er, and a Whole Bunch of Grace. “But it’s really pretty great,” I say. Many wide-eyed, sometimes horrified people react in wonder and shock as I share the story of our Christmas Day. It’s not unusual any more for my husband and my ex-husband to be sharing a [non-alcoholic] toast…
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When I found out I was pregnant at 41, there was an element of physical fear, for sure. After all, my girlie-parts were supposed to be winding down, weren’t they? And my husband was completely sterile from cancer treatment 10 years prior. (About which my more savvy girlfriends chided, “uh, you fell for that?”) This wasn’t supposed to be possible…
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What do you do with your critical mind? It might be a mental spectrum particular to a certain set of conditions; either innate or learned. Perhaps legalism, alcoholism, duplicity, perfectionism, (etc.) all play a role in creating this pattern in our brains. Let’s take a fun little jaunt across a potential* spectrum of our human critical mind. Trust me, I’m…
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Ten years ago I left a long career in the major ad agency business. I said good bye to the remarkably brilliant people at TBWA\Chiat\Day after a dozen years with that agency and embarked on a new journey. My loving team sent me off with freshly monogramed, super-luxe blank journals with uncracked bindings (you know that sound). I would go…
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Throughout their lives, as our kids have faced new challenges – moving to new cities with new schools and youth groups and sports teams – as well as launched into new lives at college and beyond, we’ve repeatedly shared this story with them to paint a simple picture of life. You could say it’s one of our family’s folk tales.…
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Last Thursday evening, my husband and two youngest kids and I met up with 7 other people we didn’t know, climbed into a van with our duffel bags and our good intentions and drove to the border town of Mexicali Mexico to build something. I’d been busy enough in the weeks leading up to our departure that I quietly panicked…
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Four weeks post-op. No cancer. No girlie parts on the inside. My tummy full of foreign objects is now a cave of emptiness (or so I imagine). I’ve had 2 follow up Doctor visits and I keep hearing how great I’m doing. I think a doctor’s point of view has a much wider contextual range than I do for my…
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We aren’t ready for these phone calls, ever. She said, “I took the liberty of making you an appointment at one of the country’s top gynecological oncologists and he’s going to come in today to see you and you need to be there at 1:00. Here’s the address.” It was 12:25 and I was pulling into my client’s offices for…
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There isn’t a precise moment when you can see it happen. Only that he has grown. It’s not an abrupt shift, and could possibly only be observed through a time lapse filming, like the BBC’s Planet Earth footage of a flower blooming or a sunrise from space. It is as dramatic and beautiful as that, too. Truly the bloom, the…
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If we try to hide our children from controversial content, they may not learn to think for themselves about important issues they’ll face throughout their life. If we try to force our own views on them without demonstrating openness to always-new ways of seeing people, we might miss a chance to teach and learn the mightiest of skills ourselves. If…
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Lest I neglect completely my humble yet therapeutic, personal yet pseudo-public journal of womanly gymnastics of the mental order, I find today an opportunity to celebrate a beautiful jaunt through another, not-yet-actual friend’s interpretation of a childhood favorite. Not my childhood particularly, unless of course, you consider the Warner Brothers version of said favorite childhood tale. I have only another…
