A little more than 2 weeks ago, I left the hospital with my daughter where she’d nearly died a second time in two months.
Last night we celebrated her 13th birthday with a few of her friends out on Lake Michigan. And I’m in awe, slightly scared, fighting off tears (because that would be “totally embarrassing, mom!”). Continue reading “Restore—Rivers in the Dry Wasteland”
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:
Tweet This Continue reading “Just as Beautiful” 
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”
I’ve spent the two weeks thinking about the future. It isn’t necessarily a “New Year’s Resolution” or even a “Word for the Year” kind of pondering. It’s more of a “what do I want to be” kind of processing.
2017 was hard. I spent a vast majority of social gatherings silently pleaded with everyone I met not to say, “Well, it could be worse!” Because life in the Tromp house always seemed to become worse.
But somewhere in the tears, exhaustion, and bracing myself for what would come next, I began to redefine a few things. Big things.
Like the words, “I’m blessed.”
Life goes, clicking along, time slipping, easy until
falling
scrambling,
clattering,
broken
LOST
lost, Lord, I’m lost
fears,
tears,
searches,
questions
Solutions, ideas, suggestions, all well-meaning
clutter,
frustrate,
choke
Makes me scream silent
cling,
slip,
cling,
slip,
again
again
again
This was written in response to the Five Minute Friday prompt: Motivate. It’s rather ironic that I struggled deeply with this week’s prompt. The rules are: write for 5 minutes and no editing.
I pretty much destroyed all the rules this week.
This is the result of my fourth go at this prompt. I still hate it…and, in addition, I’m still in the quagmire of plot problems and writer’s block for a novel starring Sam and his wife Charlotte (you met them in short stories here and here).
I know all the suggestions, all the tricks, but every time I throw myself at this, it shatters at my feet.
But I sit behind the computer and cling to what I know and have a go again…
I’m learning that questioning yourself, your faith, your work, isn’t always a bad thing.
Tweet ThisHow about you? Where are you struggling to motivate yourself?
Sometimes what my characters say take me by surprise with how appropriate for where I am in my life. It’s almost like they’re talking to me. A while back I caught my character, Ryan James, talking about shadows and I realized how right he was.
See 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 Shadows”
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”
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”
For Five Minute Friday, I usually write a short story. The character “magically” appear in my mind along with how they feel and what’s happening. Normally, I can see a scene—a rise in the action and the fall. (It’s a lovely byproduct of telling stories for YEARS…until someone catches you actually talking to yourself.)
But this week, the prompt speak has left me scrambling. It has, ironically, stripped me of words. Bits and pieces of thoughts & characters tumbled through my mind—images of my daughter speaking up for a fellow student, a gentle word from a friend, the struggle to tell the truth—but they’re void of the rise and fall.
And I wonder if there might be a reason for that. Continue reading “Words and a Life Lived”
This week my friends and I hosted that glorious thing that is a garage sale—where folks paw through my abundance of junk priceless treasures to add to their homes.
It’s key to excelling in Mom Life to both host and attend one of these circuses for a bonanza of deals. So to all of you out there who pack an extra $20 bill in your purse just in case you spot a sign on the street, I give you: