humility
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moreWhen You Feel like Everyone is Bigger, Better, Smarter… { or ‘How to be a Star’}
On Monday, May 13 th, 2013When the fog meandered in lost on a spring evening in May, she hung her apron up in the back mudroom. She wandered down the back lane too. Down in the woods, she could hear them, the frogs singing, an invisible symphony. She knotted the one side of her skirt up to step over a pothole. She tried to make her way. In a world of reaching, how do you rest? In a cul...
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moreWhen You Need The Very Best Valentine
On Thursday, February 14 th, 2013To the one who takes me anyway: I know that it really might not have been. That I could have laughed too loud — wait. I did laugh too loud — but the craziest thing was that you didn’t roll your eyes but looked into mine instead. I’ve got no bloomin’ reason why. Why did you find my eyes and look straight and unasham...
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moreWhy the Battle for Joy is Really Worth it {Crazy Joy 17}
On Wednesday, October 17 th, 2012Back then I said I’d never be like him. I slammed doors to punctuate the point and to make sure my dad knew it. You can be tall and 15 and think you know a lot of things. And you don’t think about growing old and looking squishy around the middle and telling teenagers to just turn out the lights. You don’t think about how you can open your mouth and let the sh...
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moreWhat in the World Should Christians Wear?
On Tuesday, June 12 th, 2012He does a double take. It’s got to be my ridiculous bed head. I step back from the luggage carousel, run my fingers through tired hair. It’s mid June and I’m flying home from speaking, only to find my flight home to Canada canceled. It had been after 2 in the morning when I finally fell into the pillow in a darkened hotel room, heavy air freshener masking a millio...
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moreWhen the World gets Loud & Divisive
On Tuesday, May 22 nd, 2012Standing out there in the garden, all the spinach leaves offered up like bunches of bouquets there at her feet, she listened for the quiet. The corn grew in straight rows. The apple blossoms made promises. The irises unfolded bold hope. Roots would wait for rain. Seeds would be faithful to...
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When You Feel like Everyone is Bigger, Better, Smarter… { or ‘How to be a Star’}
On Thursday, May 03 rd, 2012When the fog meandered in lost on a spring evening in May, she hung her apron up in the back mudroom. She wandered down the back lane too. Down in the woods, she could hear them, the frogs singing, an invisible symphony. She knotted the one side of her skirt up to step over a pothole. She tried to make her way. In a world of reaching, how do you rest? In a cul...
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more4 Ways to be a Better Friend
On Thursday, February 23 rd, 2012It was after Mare Griebe* said she was done with me, that I knew. Mare, she had taken me to my first youth Bible study. She delivered the thick folded notes from the first boy who ever asked me out. And I had flown half across the country to be her maid of honor, then again, ten years later to hold her first baby. We talked lactation and I helped with latch and I thought we...
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morewhen somedays seem like a struggle…
On Friday, August 12 th, 2011It was right up there, after the woman in the buggy turned a corner. After she turned a corner and passed the humility of wheat, the sheaves bowed and surrendered. After she took one long breath and released her grip and let the reins lie loose across her open palm. After she’d just decided that, wherever this road l...
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morewhen you get to the root of some of the fears
On Wednesday, July 13 th, 2011Who said courage wears a Red Badge? It’s just khaki capris, a black tee, I pull out of the closet for a day dawning summer, me leaving the house for the heat, appointment and errands. I have no red badge of courage, but I’m trying to wear prayer, the murmur of the weak made strong in the breaking. Fear can snap the brave bones… stiff twigs underfoot. I keep fumbling p...
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morehow to be outstanding in your field
On Tuesday, July 12 th, 2011Knee high by the first of July is what they say. That’s how high the corn needs to be in this neck of the woods by that day on the calendar, if we are going to make crop before fall and first frost. When we walk the fields in early evening, he says it too, how he had wondered if we’d make it this year. ...
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moreWhat Being Truly Human Looks Like….
On Thursday, May 19 th, 2011‘So what’s got you sitting here by the side of the road with a smile like that?” My brother cuts the engine on his rumbling diesel pick-up. I’m waiting at the end of the field, waiting for men working up dirt. My brother’s headed home from his barn chores and a couple hundred hogs. I roll my window right down, but nothing’s containing the way I am feeling. “I ...
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moreHow to Live Fulfilled
On Friday, February 11 th, 2011There’s three on the sill, all open to light, all open for filling, all for what comes just as He gives it, and me just wanting to find corks, even now. Mama said it to me the other night, us sitting in her front room in a ring of lamp light and me ringing the rim of my cup of hot chocolate again, again. Me wondering if I made a wrong turn somewhere and ...
