I don't feel like I'm standing on holy ground. It feels more like I'm standing on three day old remnants of shredded wheat. I don't feel like I'm giving my kids the greatest gift of love and therefore receiving their love and overflowing with God-love. It feels more like...
Read moreHow stupid gets washed away
When I was nine I spent approximately three weeks laying on my hands in bed, sick to near-death from the chicken pox. My mom may dispute the three weeks claim. It could've been one, or it could've been five for all I knew in my state of delirium, but it seemed like an eternity's worth of Monkees and Brady Bunch reruns, interspersed with Ducktails and chicken noodle soup.
I was somewhat new to school at the time, in our first year back in Kansas after a year's exile in Missouri following my parents' divorce. It was a nice school in a nice neighbourhood, but I didn't like my teacher because she wore an unrealistic curly brown wig. She was different like I was different and I hated being different, therefore I hated my teacher.
Read moreThe one who came last
Some days you sit in a car with a sleeping child because this is the only moment of peace in your day. He is a blur, in pictures and in your mind, so that when he is stilled - peach lips parted, chest gently rising, not even a sound escaping - you don't dare move for fear of missing it.
Read moreThe thing about mother's day : we are all mothers
I have an amazing mother, who raised me and my sister on her own, working hard and relying on the family of church and neighbours when her own lived wide across the state. It's a testimony to faith, really, that when she was alone in a big city with two little girls, men of God came alongside her. Women of God looked after her. And we were not alone, raised by our mother, and the Church.
The Church, she is not perfect. There was a time or two when she was found terribly wanting and absent, when we were in crisis and the hand of help was withdrawn. My mother was not a widow, you see, and we were not orphans. Not in the technical sense, anyway. And though she grieved and cried, wounded, my mother held on to faith. To God. She forgave, and waited for the Church to come around.
Read moreOn being done, but still holding on
So it turns out, I don't mind it all that much. Every night his chubby hand reaches for mine and he asks, "You lay down by me?" We've both settled into it nicely, now. And even though the sky is still bright as the days linger longer, we lay down. A few books between us, cars and trucks jumbled in blankets. I lay down by him and he turns to his side, snoring. Asleep in no time.
We are in the rhythm.
He's our last, you see. No more babies.
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