Tag: BeautifulUgly

There’s Something About Thursday–Shadows

Janyre2 Comments

It’s time for one of the two Thursdays of every month where I give a nod to the things that make us stop and say, “There’s something about . . .”

Shadows

This is something I wrote awhile ago and it fits perfectly with one of the characters I’m working on . . . and to be honest with me sometimes.

There is something about shadows —that absence of light— that kids instinctively fear. Adults have a more educated view that thinks the dark patches really can’t hurt us. That there isn’t anything hiding inside trying to get out.

But if I’m honest with myself, there’s still something about the dark.

Perhaps the kids have it right.

But if there are shadows, Continue reading “There’s Something About Thursday–Shadows” →

The Making of a Tiger

Janyre10 Comments

This is a short story revealing a little background on the characters of Darkness Calls the Tiger. The story was actually the point where the characters took shape in my mind. And while I wrote this back in 2012 or so, the book wasn’t published until 2024. 

Good things come to those who wait, my friends.

The main character here (John) is the father of the main character in the book (Kailyn). It’s set in the Himalayan mountains of Burma (what’s now Myanmar). Hope you enjoy it . . .

Making of Tiger

He didn’t have much use for his small knife any longer. It had been so long since he’d carved blocks of wood into jungle animals, that the monsoon rains had left rust and mold on the blade.

But tonight. Tonight his hands needed the feel of wood. The surety behind its hardness. The knife peeling away bits and flakes to reveal what had always lurked beneath the bark.

John rubbed a calloused thumb across the edges. His white skin stark against the ridged grain.

A scream ripped through the jungle and John jumped from the fallen log. His daughter, Kailyn, sat quiet. Amber eyes wide, staring through the fire at her Papa, shifting between the door of their thatch-roofed home and the jungle. He knew she wanted to run, but her mother’s pain contained her here. Captured in the flickering light of the fire. Continue reading “The Making of a Tiger” →

Find Your Way

Janyre4 Comments

Finding My Way-3
I can’t believe that it’s been 3 years since I lost my grandma, my friend. My memories with her are still so vivid…

•  Garish orange, yellow, and green Tupperware stashed in her cupboard containing cookies stale from summer’s humidity.
•  Her fingers, knuckles swollen with arthritis, clutching a hand of cards.
•  Red raspberries we cousins snuck from her bushes.
•  The taste of her lemonade. No one made it better.

And later . . .

•  Her laughter crackling over the phone when she told me the stories of trying and failing to live up to her mother’s expectations.
•  The citrus smell of Constant Comment tea as we sat at her little table talking . . . especially after I found out my parents were splitting for good.
•  Her still form in the casket across the room. I couldn’t bear to get closer and really see.

This last weekend, before it registered that it was the anniversary of Gramma’s death, I started going through my grandparent’s WWII era papers. My grandfather’s sprawling notes about airplane props and engines, my grandmother’s diary from her college days, his denied request to be trained as a helicopter pilot in the 1950’s.

Finding My Way

It makes me think about the differences between my life and theirs. The things I wish I had and the things I’m glad I don’t.

Despite the fact I’m not quite done with my first book, I’m beginning to see pieces of the next one. Maybe I’ll find her again in it and get one last word of advice. “Find your way, sweetheart . . . find your way.”

Regardless, I’m thankful for the things my Gramma taught me and looking forward to talking with her again some day.

Love you Gramma. See you again soon.

There’s Something About Deadlines

Janyre5 Comments

It’s time for one of the two Thursdays of every month where I give a nod to the things that make us stop and say, “There’s something about . . . ”

Deadlines Twitter

It’s spring break week here in Michigan.

I’m joining my friends, neighbors, and family in the water. Theirs is of the Florida-like, warm water beach variety and mine is, unfortunately, strictly metaphorical.

My fabulous kids are home and doing a great job of entertaining themselves while I work. So it isn’t their fault that I’m near drowning and the sharks are circling.

I have an overloaded schedule.

We’ve all been there. We’re happily going through life and we think, “Yes, I can take that project on . . . and that one . . . ” and then suddenly: Continue reading “There’s Something About Deadlines” →

Get Your Wallow On

Janyre4 Comments

Get Your Wallow On

I’ll admit there are times when I get tired of looking for beauty in all the first-world ugly I see. I just want to wallow for a minute or two . . . or a week.

Just so we’re clear, to wallow is a verb meaning to roll about in the mud for refreshment.

Yep. Rolling in the mud for refreshment. Get out me out some tunes and get a little pig wallow on.

I don’t know about you but I’m not sure rolling in the ugly is refreshing. I know it isn’t pretty for anyone to watch and it makes me downright sticky and stinky. And yet I do it.

I find myself failing again and getting stuck there, burying myself in the ugly. Counting the ways life is hard:

Continue reading “Get Your Wallow On” →

Trust, Sweat, and Tears

Janyre1 Comment

Trust, Sweat, TearsI sat on the edge of my son’s bed, hands shaking, stomach roiling at the thought of what I had to do. String thread through my fingers, a loop hung in the middle.

His eyes were wide, tears brimming. It had to be done and there was no one else to do it.

The only reason my son sat still as I reached into his mouth, was because he trusted that I loved him . . . and it was, after all, only a tooth that needed to be pulled. Continue reading “Trust, Sweat, and Tears” →

The Secret to Joyful Living

JanyreLeave a comment

Secret to Joyful LivingThe other day I was washing dishes, trying to find SOMETHING good in the pile of stuck on food. I looked up and outside my kitchen window was a mourning dove watching me. It sat there, with its black eye staring me down, calmly observing.

They’re a dime a dozen around my house. Awkward, bulky critters who spend much of their time alone in my trees coming down to scavenge, and lament to one another. (Apparently they’re rather like me . . . but that’s beside the point.)

Despite my somewhat pathological fear of being in close proximity to birds, its feathers looked so soft I wanted to hold the thing. I was amazed at how many tiny feathery appendages covered just the dove’s head. Continue reading “The Secret to Joyful Living” →

Oh the Irony!

Janyre2 Comments

Oh the Irony!Life is full of irony. Things that look one way, but are, in fact, something else entirely.

Creepy or helpful? Spiders are rather, well, creepy, but they also keep down the level of mosquitoes buzzing around our heads.

Destructive or productive? Forest fires destroy huge swaths of woods, but the ash makes the land more fertile and without the smoke and heat, some seeds wouldn’t sprout.

It’s something I’ve found in my own personal life. Right isn’t easy. Sometimes being nice isn’t kind.

This week I realized that I spend a lot of time looking for, praying to find the place where I’m comfortable. And I’ve often equated that with being content. But it’s not.

Comfortable does not equal content.

I’m discovering that the things that make me uncomfortable, the weaknesses I fight, are sometimes my greatest strengths.

Like a lot of artists and writers, I fight negativity, depression, the ugliness. But, if I choose, the darkness that hides inside me forces me to see the goodness in others and the world around me. It drives me to be content.

It doesn’t make sense. But all the same, it does.

How about you? What are the ironies in your life?

There’s Something About Bravery

Janyre4 Comments

BraveryAwhile back, I spent the weekend with a good friend who had moved away and some other women who I didn’t know well, but I still consider friends.

We spent a lot of time telling the stories of our lives. I didn’t think about it at the time, but, as I look back, I’m struck with how brave each of these women were and are.

Several traveled with friends when they were young. One moved out when she was seventeen. One scuba dived with sharks.

If I had asked them to tell me about the bravest thing they’d ever done, they would have told those stories.

But what captured me wasn’t the exciting actions of their youth, but how they dealt with the junk life inevitably deals out: Continue reading “There’s Something About Bravery” →

There’s something about Brokenness

Janyre1 Comment

BrokennessThroughout my life, I’ve traveled past myriad straight, even people—the perfect, solid fence posts. Each guarding a territory, surrounding, protecting, being useful.

But it’s those people that have been pushed over, beaten down, broken that mark the landscape, draw my eye, quietly call for additional investigation.

What is it about the people that have faced the worst life can throw at them and—slightly crooked, bent, perhaps chipped on all sides—still stand? What is it about them that makes them stand regardless of the compelling forces around them? What is it about their combination of grit and brokenness that makes them beautiful?

To be fully honest, my deepest desire is to avoid the things that might strain me. But I know full well the impossibility of that hope.

And so knowing, I study the standing broken, hoping beyond hope that when life comes, stomping, beating, blistering, that I too will stand. Beautiful if broken.