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…
-
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Recently I had the privilege of hearing two brilliant pastors on different ends of the country speak – live – and directly to me as if they had read the whole messy complicated backstory before their talk began. First, I listened to Pastor Jim Samra’s teaching all the way from our former church in Michigan (thanks to live web streaming)…
-
Time works hard. 15 years ago I heard the expression “all in God’s time,” and as a confirmed control freak, I was quite intrigued with this mystery. I was painstakingly seeking the truth of God, flip-flopping around the structures of religion and new age fads, so the notion of “God’s timing” as something beyond my control was new. I remember…
-
Sometimes when we forge new paths, we find footprints we ourselves left decades earlier. Our family is moving back to Southern California from the serene and naturally beautiful Western edge of the mitten state. (Hold up your left hand.) I spent my childhood in Michigan, so I have a deep fondness for the lakes and the uniqueness of this state’s…
-
Last week on NPR I heard a fascinating interview with a psychiatrist who uses avatar therapy to quiet the negative voices in people’s minds and free them from the burdens imposed by fear, doubt, anxiety, insecurity (etc.). I’ve since read that this sort of therapy is even used to treat clinical schizophrenia. Fascinating, isn’t it? Talk about theater of the…
-
We’ve never doubted for a moment that our family was meant to make this move. Four years ago when we leaped out of our highly chaotic lives in Chicago to move to West Michigan to accept a wonderful position at a fine company, we knew in our hearts and minds it was excellent. It was time to change. In that…
-
Of all the things we choose to believe today, From the press and the politicians and bloggers and pinners, and the clock on the wall. Good and bad. Gossip and Truth. Each day of living horizontally amidst the demands of the world …as far as our simple eyes and mind can see. Today we all have long lists of important…
-
One of the significant slivers of conditioning that I’ve had to wrestle as a shattered-and-redeemed woman, is many years of training that sin has tiers. Sort of like a small, medium and double-triple-XL spectrum of sin measurement. Unfortunately when I learned the beautiful gift of confession, it was apparently attached to a commensurate punishment, which of course, meant my 12-year-old…
-
Does a week’s blogging absence demand an explanation? (I hope so;) I’ve been recovering. Early last week I stood before hundreds of women and told my scandalous story of ‘mad woman redeemed.’ A friend asked, “is this by choice?” My sister said, “No, technically it’s not normal for people to want to confess their ugly past.” I wouldn’t say it…
-
I know it’s an old idea. But my joyful expulsion of co-dependent behavior allows me to fly freely in the face of the perception of public ridicule. Besides, if not now, when? It’s my turn to play the Six Word Memoir game. People on Twitter do one of these every minute, which I consider less interesting than trying to creatively…
-
I have enjoyed the ministry of Emily Freeman’s Dear Me. I’m late for her submission, but here goes. As I finally sit down to non-chalantly toy with the concept, I’m more in the mood for a list than a letter. It might be because it’s Friday night and we’re watching an odd animated movie by a cozy fire. Or it…
-
This week’s lesson in Jack’s Kids-N-Action church group is about arguing. Wednesday, the magnificent youth leader rallied hundreds of kids to holler in unison, “Y’ALL STOP ARGUING!” each time he shouted “what are we gonna do?!” The crammed Castle Room at our church rattled with the chorus of shortpeople yelling, presumably, at their selves. It was adorable and loud. In…
-
Ray Sammons is my husband’s father, and while many women are deeply blessed by the men who raised their husbands, I know that I have been uniquely loved by this wonderful man. When God delivered Steve into my then-chaotic life, He knew I needed Ray equally as much. It was 2003. I was stepping blindly through the heavy fog of…
-
I think I get it. We’re boggled sometimes. Perhaps it’s because so many of us find a new understanding of God and His love for us through his Son only when we drop to our knees in helplessness because we’ve made a mess of our own life…. that we get all boggled up in the notion that we have to…
-
They broke into the iconic harmony of Carry On My Wayward Son, and the nostalgia-hungry crowd stood to their feet. Of all the 70’s bands touring the world right now, presumably because they are managing some equation of “need” and “want”, we find ourselves at the Kansas concert. Really? Kansas? Eldest sister saw Aerosmith in Detroit and OH! how I would have…
