I suppose if we’re going to discuss beauty, it’d be important to be sure we’re all talking about the same thing. Definitions are slippery things…especially when you’re arguing that the thing you’re defining is of life and death importance, which we’ll get to next week.
Let’s start easy. I think most of us can agree on the first aspect. Continue reading “Beauty Defined”
I’m standing at a crossroad. A place where I’m trying to make choices. Responsible choices. I’ve too much going on and I want to simplify. But then I’m confronted with brokenness, and I ache to help—to do something tangible. Sound familiar?
I suspect some of you are with me in the struggle. Often I find that I only see one step ahead, but strangely others can see more clearly than I. Perhaps, just maybe, together we can work out the next step.
As I struggle through decisions—what’s best as a mom, a writer, a wife. I’m called to be purposeful; to demand a higher level for myself; to be a clarion call of beauty, goodness, and truth—I started processing through the written word. I am, after all, a writer! What came out was the poem below.
There are a stack beautiful picture books nestled into a tray on my coffee table. They’re my kids favorite books. Probably because the books are actually family albums and full of reminders of the fun times we’ve had together. There’s the rare picture they hate (like the one of my son crying because he’s covered head-to-toe in permanent marker) or prefer the world not to see (like the one with the goofy expression).
But there’s more to the story. There’s life between the snapshots. Continue reading “Life Between the Snapshots”
We’re coming up to the end of August, and my kids will soon be joining the ranks of bleary-eyed students returning to school. Summer is ending, and I’m not sure how I feel.
I don’t like endings.
It’s dark.
I can’t quite see what’s coming next.
And my self-preservation kicks in screaming, “Run the other way, idiot!”
But as time ticks steadily down, it’s quite impossible to for us mere mortals sprint back up the time continuum. Unless you’re Dr. Who. And I, dear friends, am not Dr. Who.
There’s a fear, a stress that comes with change. Even good change. My husband switched jobs this summer. Stress. I’m contemplating pruning my commitments. Stress. My daughter is 11. That’s stressful in and of itself but she’s starting soccer for the first time ever. Mama stress.
But my good-stuff stress is nothing. I have a friend a few years older than me getting married for the first time in middle age. Super stress. Another friend completely an adoption from overseas. Mega-stress.
And then there’s the stuff that hits you like a train when you’re just trying to get through an ordinary day. Pop quizzes, broken legs, cancer diagnosis, car accidents,…you see why I don’t like the unknown?
So much that could come next. Sure school brings early mornings, alarm clocks, and the end of summer. But it also brings routine and a few moments of quiet.
Every sidewalk end, every cliff you step up to leaves you open. The vistas are wide and filled with potentially amazing experiences. You see…
Tweet ThisSo in this season of change, I pray you will find peace. That you will see potential and take it. That even as you mourn what is no longer that you will celebrate what is coming. And that you will give yourself the grace of time to figure it all out.
We were becoming desperate for rain, and the hot weeks have sucked the flowers dry. But along the highway, a sneaky beauty grew. The grasses glowed golden, backlit by the horizontal sun peeking out from the storm clouds.
Who would have thought that mere dry grass could be beautiful?
And yet it is so. The moment the world is dry and hard, it isn’t the flashy obvious flowers that persevere. It’s the overlooked, underappreciated beauty.
Catching snatched looks at that hidden beauty as I drove, I thought, Good for you…
And my fingers tightened down on the steering wheel as if doing so could lock down my heart and fight back the tears.
As a writer, mom…as a woman, I’ve compared myself to everyone around me. It’s a dangerous pastime where I ALWAYS lose. Either by looking down my nose at someone else, or realizing I don’t measure up.
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See the grasses were dry and brown, rather like I am right now. I’m not only not THE best, I’m not even MY best right now. I’m as brittle as the grasses, feeling boring, tired, and taking it out on everyone. I’m up against some physical issues . . . again, which have me channeling a rabbit in both what I put into my body and what’s coming out. And I don’t even care if that’s TMI.
There in the car on the way to the next doctor’s appointment, the light trickled across me, falling on the grasses. Highlighting failures and at the same time beauty.
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And neither do you.
“Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”Over the last week, these words have been echoing in my head, and I couldn’t help but reflect on the prophetic thoughts in my blog last week . . . Freedom is a powerful thing.
I honestly fought this post. I wrote a different one. A funny one which I’ll post next week. But I found I couldn’t not post this one because I see how the events of this week could change the lives of my children.
So I ask you:
We have freedom guaranteed by our laws, but how are we using it? We have the freedom to carry weapons, the right to free speech. Continue reading “Decimate the Divide”
I’m sitting at my kitchen table, the slider open to the summer night sounds. It’s warm and the air is heavy with expected rain, and the sky is slowly overcome with thunderheads climbing and tumbling forward.
The coming storm is a beautiful and dreadful thing. Pulsing electric and alive. Capable of bringing life . . . and destruction in equal measure.
Two hundred and forty years ago, a group of men signed a document declaring their independence from a separate nation. In doing so they launched a grand experiment. One where there are self-evident truths: “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
What do you want to be when you grow up? It’s a question we pose to nearly every child we meet. For the record, my daughter’s answer veers wildly from writer to mom to artist to scientist while my son’s answers are a predictable shrug of the shoulders and impish grin.
But I’ve really come to hate that question. You see, as I’m creeping up and over the hill, it seems to have returned to my life with a vengeance. You are 40-years-old, what do you want to be?
Unfortunately for all of you, it such a familiar sense of lostness that the question has a name–middle age crisis. And what a crisis it can be. Continue reading “Making Life Worthwhile”
It was a mixed up kind of day. Grey clouds engulfing the sun only to have the sun burn through, lighting the woods in snips and patches.
I could see my daughter’s bright blue coat flitting between the just leafing out trees. Hunting a critter, building a fort, or some such childhood imagining. The neighbor kid voices rose and fell in excitement until half blue with cold they all stumbled through my door in search of water, a snack, and an ear to listen to their adventures.
It had been a rough day. I was running into an issue with my editorial work. And then running into it again. And then again…Those days everyone has sometimes.
As I listened to my kids’ chatter, it reminded me of the times when the hill behind my childhood house was a mountain and the squirrels were bears chasing my brothers and I. Or when we were lost in the “expansive” woods, and horsetail reeds became scavenged salads—definite survival food.
I miss those times. Times when imagination bled into real life. Where anything could be imagined better. And I realized there’s something to a childlike perspective that we, as adults, need to rediscover.
Not that we can to ignore Continue reading “Adult-Sized Problems, Childlike Solution”
This isn’t my normal posting day, but I have news and I’m too excited to not share with you all. I’m starting a new venture blogging and editing for the brand new Dove Parenting Blog. It’s for The Dove Foundation, which is an amazing non-profit that works to help parents make intelligent decisions about the media kids consume. They’re kind of the originators of the concept and have Hollywood’s ear.
While the Dove Parenting Blog is a lot more “mommy blog” than what I do here, there’s a lot of cross-over. The blog is all about being an intentional parent and helping other parents on that path too. Being intentional about our lives in general is what makes it possible for us to uncover beauty–pretty or not. See, it’s connected.
So for any parents out there, feel free to pop over and check out Dove’s blog, spread the word, and let me know what you think.