I turned out okay. Poptarts and Little Debbies didn’t ruin me and, come to think of it, I wasn’t ever ruined at all. Even things less than ideal, painful as some were and even are, did not undo me. They made me.
No Matter How You Feel
“I love you no matter how you feel,” I tell her as she backs herself against the wall, panic in her eyes as her emotions overwhelm her. I’m familiar with that panicky feeling— not only because I’m currently walking alongside my second highly sensitive daughter through toddlerhood, but also because my toddler’s emotions mimic my …
Maybe You Can Forgive Yourself
I’d decided to meet a friend and her kids downtown at the Science Center even though the thought of just getting there aggravated my ever-present anxiety. In the 7.8 million person Asian metropolis where we lived at the time, our two best options for getting downtown were taxi and subway. I generally tried to steer …
A Bucket of Grace
Some people seem to do just fine with a 'lil trickle of grace. They don’t seem to have a lot of needs. They appear to have their "ish" together, as they say. I am not one of those people. I usually feel as though I’ve got needs coming out my ears. The trickle that seems …
Crows and Locusts: A Drafting Desk Blog Guest Post
There’s an old Brooke Fraser song called “Crows and Locusts” that I don’t think I ever really understood, except that it’s been swirling around in my head as I study Galatians and talk to my counselor and sit still enough to think about what’s happening in my soul. “It was the year The crows and …
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Gospel à la Gilmore Girls
Near the end of season 2, Lorelai, the protagonist of one of my all-time-favorite shows, Gilmore Girls, is graduating from business school. She returned to community college as an adult, after leaving high school when she got pregnant with her now sixteen-year-old daughter, Rory. To set the scene just a bit more, a …
I Am a Good Mom.
These five words have begun changing everything for me. Maybe for many mothers those words are not that big of a deal. But for me, they are darn-right revolutionary. They literally declare war on a set of beliefs, fears and insecurities at the very center of my soul. Last year, I noticed how hard it is …
My Body, Broken: A Kindred Mom Guest Post
“My body is broken, ruined.” This became the overwhelming thought of despair in my mind more than a few times in the weeks following the birth of my second daughter. After being miserable during the recovery of my first delivery, an unwanted c-section, I'd insisted on a VBAC for my second, hoping (expecting) the recovery …
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Death and Resurrection
A little over a year ago, at the start of Lent, I was in Thailand. Surrounded by the beauty and glory of Creation, my soul usually feels most alive, and yet, all I could see -- all I could feel -- was death. Months earlier, my dear friend lost her child very late term. Weeks …
I Want to Run
Yesterday was beautiful. The sky was blue-ish, the sun was shining and it was the warmest day we've had in a long time. Come to think of it, for the wild and free heart, it was a let-your-hair-down-and-just-run kind of day. And my sweet girl stays pretty tuned into her wild and free heart. All wild, …
hope for the sojourn 