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Season’s Greetings

I’ve been thinking a lot about seasons lately. You see, I’m a planner. I find great comfort in knowing as best as I can what’s next, how to accomplish it, what steps to take. I do this with everything. I mean ... everything. From my meals to my workouts to my kids’ schedules. Especially my kids schedules. So, when this COVID thing hit, it didn’t just send me for a loop, it sent me into a vortex. Like the eye of a tornado kind of vortex. I love my kids, but I’m no school teacher. In fact, I spend lots of money at the end of each school year on bribes - I mean gifts - to show my deep appreciation for these professionals. So, when I first learned spring break was being extended, I panicked a little. Then two weeks later, school was delayed further until ultimately distance learning became our new normal. Except it wasn’t normal. Far from it. My children, one who suffers from a learning disability, struggled to the finish line. My husband and I jockeyed for space in our small home to fin
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Recent posts

Unhappy Endings - Facing Our Own Season Finale

I've never been good at endings. It's something most of my closest friends know about me. And it goes way back. I remember in elementary school, when I finished my last day of sixth grade at the school I'd attended my whole life. Depression hit me like a sack of sadness, and I couldn't move on from the fact that I'd never darken those doors again. Instead, childhood was being shed like a too-tight skin to make way for pre-teendome. And I was not a fan. To this day, I won't watch the series finale when I stream my favorite shows because it's too sad. In my twisted little world, as long as I don't watch Monica, Chandler, Pheobe, Ross, Joey and Rachel walk down that hallway one last time, then they continue on as they always have ... sipping coffee at Central Perk and living their quirky, mid-90s lives. There's comfort in that for me. Even if I know it isn't true. Today, I'm facing one of those endings that I know will hurt like my first
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Open Palms: Learning to Hold On Loosely

I can't even tell you how long it's been since I've written in my blog. Months? Years? Probably years. But daily I have messages fly in and through my mind that I think, "I've got to share this with people!" but I never do because I'm usually driving a kid or chasing a kid or yelling at a kid or nagging a kid to pick up something off the floor. You get the picture.  Yet, I'm compelled to get off my rump and finally put this down because, Lord help me, I've been through a lot lately. Not kidding. Full disclosure, we haven't been through as much as some, and I'm not claiming to understand other people's real pain or suffering ... like cancer or the loss of a child. So, please understand I'm living in reality here when I tell you these recent life challenges are probably child's play compared to some people's daily mountains. But for those struggling with climbing over the steep hill called trust in times of change, thi
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To the toddler mom who commented on my teenager ...

It's been a while since I've posted. I can only say that this has been quite a year of life lessons ... many of which I will share very soon. For now, I feel compelled to write about an encounter I had just last night. She was standing there after what I can only assume had already been a harrowing day, a baby strapped to her chest, another crawling on the nearby carpet and a toddler, tired from his gymnastics class, weeping from exhaustion. It was summer, after all, a time of going and doing, hot summer days and not-early-enough nights. That's when she noticed me, standing with my almost-13-year-old son, who had recently shot past me in height. His self possession and maturity must have struck her, as I could see a quick glint of jealousy streak across her face. I recognized that look. I'd had it not so long ago when I was the mom of little tots, which elevated my joy to the heavens while sapping my strength. I remember coveting the phase of life other moms were in
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Why I Pray for ISIS

"I just don't understand, Mom," my 11-year-old asked me yesterday morning. "Why would people hurt other people just because they don't believe the same way?"       Our conversation was one held in thousands of other households across the globe, but for us, it was unique. All these years I've shielded my children from the world's chaos and destruction. I've ceased watching the news in their presence, unsubscribed to newspapers and guard their online activity like a hawk watching over her babies. But at a certain point the world intrudes and we must face these discussions head-on and with spiritual awareness.      I used the opportunity to explain that hardened, dark hearts don't feel remorse for such actions. That, for reasons we can never comprehend, they feel this is their spiritual duty.     "But," I stressed, "the scripture is very clear about what to do with our enemies. We must pray for them."      The look on
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Walking Along the Road

You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.  “You shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up. I have spent six years in a blissful Norman Rockwell-esque existence with my two boys. But yesterday, the bubble popped around my fragile world. That's right. My oldest son is now an official middle-schooler. He graduated, despite the fact that I was all but shackling his ankles to his desk in an effort to keep him in his safe little cocoon. You see, I live in a sweet front-porch community where the elementary school sits smack dab in the middle of my neighborhood. Every temperate morning, I walk my kids to school and then back again at the end of the day. We literally stop and smell the roses growing alongside my neighbor's picket fence a
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Into the Valley: Loving Your Spouse Through a Layoff

It took my husband and I a couple of years to fully recover from the near year he was out of work. We were wrecked emotionally and financially. When it happened we had two tiny kids at home and I was a work-at-home mom with my own small business, which wasn't nearly enough to keep us afloat. My husband felt kicked in the teeth. A big, tough manly man, even he was reduced to tears on occasion as we groped through this new territory. The worst part for me was I didn't know how to support him. No one I knew had been through this, especially with little kids to consider. And, as our checking account dwindled so did my husband's morale. He worked odd jobs, pulled weeds, handed out fliers throughout the neighborhood advertising handy man work, anything to keep even a little money coming in. And in my lowest moments, when it didn't seem that God was hearing my prayers, it seemed life would sink even lower. A bill would come in we couldn't pay or a job that Dan had
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