Listen to this post, read aloud by Eve I’ve been wanting to write a book most of my life, but I haven’t known what to write about. And while I’ve been waiting and wondering, I’ve written courses about writing and taught them, from kindergarten through college. My students’ ages have varied, but the theme for…
Listen to this post, read aloud by Eve This is Part 2 of a two-post series. It picks up right where Part 1 left off. (A list of all “Ten Truths” can be found at the end of this post for reference.) 6. I can manage treats. Sugar is my biggest food temptation, so my…
Listen to this post, read aloud by Eve This is Part 1 of a two-post series. At first, people kept asking how I did it, so I told them. But many shook their heads in disbelief, as if what I said just couldn't be, because what I told them flew in the face of conventional…
Like a gift you didn't expect, like a smile from a grumpy grandboy after a nap, like a taste of chocolate in trail mix. When it comes to March, each fair day feels like this. I love the drama of March weather–sometimes winter, sometimes spring. It can be wild rain and wind, tornadoes and school…
Diets, workouts, weighing in. Raw veggies ad-nauseum. In January of 2001, I just couldn’t face it again, mainly because it wasn’t working, but also because it felt like prison. I couldn’t live in grim, determined deprivation again. I liked me too much. So I gave up. I told God I couldn’t do it anymore. No more…
Who would conceiveof Jesus through tales oflewdness and woe?And even if they did,who could achieve it,so those who receive himbring willing praiseto the One who makesthe worst of us good? Nothing thwarts God's plans to save.Nobody and nothinggets in his way.None tell the storyhe tells. Only the Almightyhas the powerand kindnessto turn renegade rebelsinto passionate lovers. Written after reading the stories of Joseph…
Today is Mama’s birthday. She’d be 99 in earth years. To commemorate her life, I’m reposting this letter I sent her the Christmas before she died. Dear Mama, I’ve been cleaning up the Christmas tree this week, sweeping pine needles and thinking of the things I’ve never said to you. They are the things no…
The Wednesday before Helene hit Florida's Big Bend, I drove to Florida's east coast to meet up with old college friends. Call us crazy, but we didn't want to miss our annual beach trip--or lose the vacay dollars we'd already spent. Besides, we figured that being tucked away in the most northeastern part of the…
I'm our church’s volunteer yardman. So when the deacons put in a concrete sidewalk and drop-off area for the handicapped, they clued me in, because they wanted me to move a few shrubs to make room for it. The flagstones that made up the former path were no longer needed, so the question became--what to…
When it was dawning on me that hubby Buck was in trouble and needed the ER, I had an awful thought, one I haven't admitted until now: I would have to miss my favorite class at the Y to take him, and I wasn't happy about it. I was putting on my shoes and about…
It sounded like so much fun, that I tucked the idea away in the back of my head. While raising kids, I’d read a magazine article about grandparents who held a Cousins Camp for their grandkids, while their kids skedaddled off to parts unknown. I've lived through twenty years and two knee replacements since my…
I hadn’t really wanted to get up when the alarm went off, but I did because she’d asked me to come. This was the daughter who’d recently begun to like me again, and I wasn’t going to miss it. Josie Love was in art school for the summer and had invited me for her mid-summer…
We remodeled bathrooms last winter, taking out an upstairs hall and adding its space to one bathroom, gutting a second, and updating a third. It was a project Alejandro promised to finish by late February, just in time for a women's retreat scheduled to be here. But February came and went and the retreat got…
When he wasn't griping about how late we were, he was griping about my driving. Stone wrecked the truck his senior year of high school and was dependent on me for rides to school in the mornings. We were often late leaving, and I drove fast to make up for it. Stone got better about…
We had no money for porch steps, let alone shrubbery. By the end of our project, our loan was exhausted, but even if I’d had the money, I had no time for planting. I’d been contracting our new housebuilding while trying to homeschool three children and wrangle a toddler, so my hands were already full-to-overflowing. …
Baby fever is real. I know, because I was burning up with it. I spent a year giving myself shots in my backside and putting lozenges under my tongue and graphing my morning temperature and demanding sex because my chart said to. And then, I gave up. No baby. But there was this achey, constant…
She got out of the car and loaded my suitcase in the trunk, a whoosh of stale cigarette smoke and ash exhaling with her, as if the car itself were trying to get a fresh breath of air. Debra, the Uber driver, slunk in behind the wheel, her head down, shoulders slumped. My goal was…
I don’t like to admit it, partly because it feels shameful and partly because I was raised not to notice it, much less confess it. I was taught to do exactly the opposite—to cover up weakness by becoming competent. (And if I couldn’t genuinely excel, I learned to lie about it.) As a mother, I…
No one made room for him, save the one who yelled, amidst hay and manure, blood and smells. And she prepared nothing, except to accept-- turns out was enough, she opened herself. The womb that bore him and the heart that said yes were filled with a Savior, to rule and to bless. "Prepare the…
I was swamped and decided to take the month off. While writing for my blogs and an online women's magazine are normal monthly activities, October was just too darn busy. At first, it felt like a relief to take a break, but after a while, it felt like I don't want to write anymore. In…
