I went on a walk with my girl (who just got out of the hospital…again) and saw these lovely leaves sprouting from the side of a tree.
It made me think:
Category: Etc.
Tweet ThisLosing Faith
I have a secret. One that I’m barely able to admit to myself let alone commit to words…especially those permanently affix to a blog post.
I think I’m losing faith.
Somewhere between God’s got it figured out and God loves you, it all seems to crumble, rushing through the holes of my conscious thought and into waking nightmare. I’m in the ER with my girl…again. Continue reading “Losing Faith”
Healing in the Intensive Care Unit
My daughter’s room was entombed in an unnatural twilight. The only light leaked from the monitors hanging from the IV poles and the enormous screen bearing her weak vital signs. Enormous curtains draped the windows, which, instead of revealing the living city, opened to the hallway and the nurses’ station.
Fitting I suppose. Life is a very fragile thing in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit—something to be tucked away and protected, outside the reach of the infection ravaging the limp body of the girl on the bed. This place was no place for a 12-year-old girl who 3 weeks before swam in one of the most elite meets in the state. Continue reading “Healing in the Intensive Care Unit”
Parental Sacrifice and the Hope It Provides
There is a core of who I am that is tangled in music. I grew up going to symphonies, playing in some of the best bands and orchestras in the state. I was through and through a clarinet-playing, band geek.
My house has a nearly constant musical score running underneath.
My husband is forever noodling on his guitars. I write to music and sing snippets of Broadway, Mother Goose, Louis Armstrong, Simon and Garfunkle, and even “Uptown Funk” to my kids.
Music draws pictures and speaks words I cannot always form coherently. You know what I mean?
Continue reading “Parental Sacrifice and the Hope It Provides”
A Picture, a Girl, and a Reminder—Worth a Thousand Words
From the moment my daughter was born, she was most content when not inside. As a baby, the best way to calm her colicky crying was to snuggle her in a bouncy seat under the maple tree or, when it got cold, take her for a ride in a sled.
During her early years, I spent hours in the woods trailing a toddler looking for critters under overturned logs, disguised behind leaves, and lurking in the water. We amazed at how they were created to adapt to their environment and needs.
I started photographing the animals we found and put them into a book for my girl…and those little books became board books published a few years back. (Check out the All About God’s Animal series over here. They’d make a great Christmas gift.)
My girl is a tween now and doesn’t need me by her side as she builds tree forts and digs for fishing worms. And so it’s been a long, long time since I hunted the woods, beaches, and waterways for critters and nature to capture on film.
Until now. Continue reading “A Picture, a Girl, and a Reminder—Worth a Thousand Words”
Why You Should Save, Celebrate, & Share Your Art
I met Pearl Allard through another writer friend. Pearl had driven a fair distance to be at my friend’s release party. And I knew right away I had met someone special—loyal, creative, and a kindred spirit in finding the beautiful in the not always pretty.
It’s a privilege for me to introduce you to her, and I hope you’ll love Pearl as much as I do. And, for the record, I didn’t know how much my little comments meant to her and I certainly didn’t she was going to write about it here. I’m still blushing 🙂
They were a lifeline from heaven; number twos drew me to Number One. How I don’t know, but those pencils were the only light during the darkest time of my life. I was desperate to see something, anything good, groping through blackness. Sketching brought meager solace.
I drew to learn to see. To cling to beauty. To escape. Though my soul anguished under the weight of oppressive darkness, I held a flicker of light. Something living, and good, still lurked when I looked at my imperfect rendering. It sparked hope—and guilt came galloping on its heels. Continue reading “Why You Should Save, Celebrate, & Share Your Art”
Discover: The Key to Life
I want to feel myself part of things, of the great drift and swirl: not cut off, missing things, like being sent to bed early as a child, the blinds being drawn while the sun and cheerful voices came through the chink from the garden. ~Sylvia Plath
This weekend my daughter and I went exploring. Not in the woods as we normally would, but dumpster diving in a car repair shop, my mom’s wood shop, and my clock repair man’s trash bin.
We were on a mission, looking for things that are one thing, but look like another—funky car parts that look like elkhorn coral, cogs that look like eyes, injector pieces that look like the mouth of a butterfly fish. She’s working on an art piece for a competition where “weird wins.”
And going out to play and discover felt oh so good.
Since April, my family’s been a little closed-in, trying to survive. Continue reading “Discover: The Key to Life”
Diagnosis: When it Isn’t What You Hoped
I’d gone into the doctor’s office for a persistent irritating rash under my eyes and on my neck. I expected to hear eczema or some other small, albeit annoying, diagnosis.
The doctor walked in, took one look at me and sank to a seat. She paraded through all the diagnosis I’d hoped to hear, but she knocked down each one.
She was so calm it was unnerving. Just like the eye of the hurricane. Continue reading “Diagnosis: When it Isn’t What You Hoped”
Remember—The Key to Finding What You’ve Been Looking For
There’s a reason this blog is called Beautiful. Ugly. Me. The last few months have been undeniably difficult, but here’s the thing. They’ve been beautiful, too…and I missed it.
I was flipping back through some of the photos from the last few weeks and am in awe of what I found. I’m overwhelmed by the fact that the inanimate lens of my iPhone picked up what I failed to see.
So I’m taking a moment to step back and remind myself, and hopefully you, that goodness is available for those with eyes to see. That if I’m patient, I’ll stop sabotaging myself and find what I’ve been looking for all along.
Continue reading “Remember—The Key to Finding What You’ve Been Looking For”
Support: A Moment to Say Thank You
Support:
A beam, a girder, something that holds something else up. It’s underneath, hidden, not always noticed, but beautiful in its own right.
Without it, the whole structure would fall—a pile of random pieces with nothing to hold it together. Continue reading “Support: A Moment to Say Thank You”