I heard the door open and my husband’s heavy footsteps slowly ascend the steps. “Hi Honey,” I greeted at the top. “How’d it go?” We were young with a newborn in a new city, new apartment, and he had a new construction job. “I swept floors,” he said. And that whole first week at his […]
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It was back in the day of big over the lap Rand McNally Maps. One lay across my legs while I sat shotgun on the front bench seat of our 1966 Chevy Impala. Across the two big pages, lines squiggled up and down, back and forth over pale colors of blue, yellow, and red. I […]
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If you were to walk the streets of Bologna, Italy during a spattering of months out of the year, you might see a confusing sight. Now and again whether in a crowd or walking alone, amid Armani, Prada, Dolce and Gabbana, parades a head crowned with a fresh green laurel wreath. A graceful flow of […]
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My dad used to have some succinct sayings to get his points across, as in, “ain’t got the brains God gave a goose.” This pronouncement, often hurled at politicians, portrayed a questionable bias directed toward a certain variety of bird-brained intelligence. As I heard it, I felt a sympathy toward all geese. And another, […]
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I have some dear friends, whom I love very much even though they run. I mean really run. On purpose. Because they like it. They have a few years up on me, yet they are forever completing some big mileage run. They do this with smiles on their faces. And they look good. And they […]
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The words stop me when I come across them, … “the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people…” They make me pause and close my eyes. I relate so well to such a paradox of emotions. I understand joy dwelling with heartbreak […]
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His big round eyes followed me. His little face filled with confusion, fear, and betrayal. I read his silent plea as if the words had been spoken, “Don’t leave me.” As I turned from the classroom, I remembered my son’s first baby vaccination, when those trusting eyes looked at me, startled, hurting, and as if […]
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Oh tomato plant that towers many feet above my head. Where is your fruit? I grew up on a farm in Kansas, and at the risk of embarrassing all my Kansas friends and relatives who put into canning jars what they can’t eat or give away, I couldn’t grow a bean or kernel of corn […]
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My eyes had been glued for a while to the little boy in the row ahead of me. He must have been about a year old. Fussy on his mother’s lap, I could see the parental exchange. “Should I take him out?” she mouthed to her husband. The church was packed that morning, with few […]
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“Gotta be thick-skinned to survive ministry,” advised a pastor to my young husband. “I’d never have continued if I’d let every criticism get under my skin.” As a pastor’s wife and mother, I found criticism and church-goer barbs dug deep when slung my way. They seemed to hurt even more if they were hurled at […]
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