Gratitude
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moreHow to Live Through Bad Storms
On Monday, May 20 th, 2013{because my heart is with all the folks living through all kinds of bad storms this spring…} ‘If God really works in everything — then why don’t we thank Him for everything?” She asks me this straight out. My daughter, Hope, and I, we sit in the truck on the field’s hem, waiting to give the Farmer his lunch. The Farmer’s planting bean seeds into ea...
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moreHow to Live Through the Messy
On Wednesday, April 03 rd, 2013This? This is *right* where we are at this week: She asks me how it’s going. And I have to smile. And I tell her that there are pots on the stove and crumbs on the counters and yes, wherever we are, there’s always so much good and there are always hard things. ...
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moreHow To Get Through Cancer, Dark Times, & Suffering {…and an interview @Desiring God}
On Monday, March 25 th, 2013So this Palm Sunday weekend found me gathering with the women from Perimeter Church. Where songwriter Laura Story, and her soul beautiful friend,Tiffany both attend…. and I pray their God stories in the midst of suffering forever change me: {Consider muting Mr. Nevue’s music ...
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moreDaring Greatly to Live Fully — Right Where You Are
On Monday, March 18 th, 2013When Monday gets caught in your teeth like a piece of spinach, the crazy thing is you could dare to laugh — it gets things unstuck. You know how it goes — Laugh or die. A joyful heart is good medicine, not just a good platitude. You could &...
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moreHow to find Happiness in the Dark
On Monday, March 11 th, 2013Right after I read the story, I go looking for an old horn to screw right to the wall. There are things worth the proclaiming, you know? And after I find one, I walk around the house with the horn in hand trying to figure if it looks best on this wall? Or the back of this door? The Farmer raises his eyebrows. “A horn on a wall?” He’s grinning boyish. Joshua is playing sca...
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moreLetters to the Wounded {#1}
On Friday, March 08 th, 2013And after sharing Letters to the Wound {#2} this week? …. I went back in the archives and pulled out Letters to the Wounded {#1}. D ear Wounded, You were bleeding quiet in my inbox. I read your letter slow, line by line, the way one follows the trail of smearing salty red back to find the gash, to the place where the skin weeps blood. I read your words, the ones about do...
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moreLetters to the Wounded {#2}
On Monday, March 04 th, 2013Dear Thriver, You didn’t just survive, so let’s toss that myth right at the outset. I’ve seen you living chin brave through the hurt and how you keep taking one step out of bed and one through the door and how you scale mountains by relentlessly taking steps forward. The way you keep walking? You’re no victim. You’re a Thriver. You may bleed but yo...
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moreHow Women Can Get Radical For Their Sisters
On Tuesday, February 26 th, 2013When you pick up the garbage in the streets of Minoterie, there’s the sun burning up the back of your bare white neck. And crumpled tin cans and sucked-dry water bags and an AIM toothpaste box and empty rum bottles. And barefoot boys kicking a ball, and boys begging you for just one swallow water, and boys lacing their fingers around your sweaty hand. You can bend down li...
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moreGod Made a Mother and You — So Farmer On!
On Monday, February 04 th, 2013I sat beside a girl in Mr. Seuter’s grade nine math class who said she was getting out of here. She was getting out of this no name little farming town and she was getting out of this hick place with its hick boys and she was getting free of everything her daddy ever was. I knew her daddy. He was known for planting row...
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moreHow to Breathe Through the Hard Times
On Tuesday, January 22 nd, 2013They were born the same week. Both of them, days apart, two miracle years ago this week. My scribbly little book and her loveliest little person. And my sister had said to me, said into the phone, during early labor — “Tell me I can do this.” And I wait for her to breathe heavy through the mother wave crest...
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more5 Things You Need to Know Before You Begin Your 2nd Term of Life
On Monday, January 21 st, 2013It felt like the second term to her. Her 39 and him about 40, and the first half over, now the beginning of the second. Or of the end — depending how you looked at it. You don’t get to make up most of your story. That’s what she thought at the stove over eggs, over all the cracked and broken things. ...
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moreHow to Keep in Time with God
On Monday, January 14 th, 2013There wasn’t a morning that she didn’t flick off her bedroom light and find it right there on the edge of the table outside their bedroom door. One round vitamin C that he’d leave out for her, before he went to the barn and his udder-dripping sows. Like he thought she could just take it and keep the day from being infected with grief. Like there was a way to i...
