cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
“I am not nearly as much fun as I was a year ago.” I made this statement to a friend after she asked what I’ve observed as the biggest change in myself since I started working as a chaplain. Sitting with others in the depths of their despair, pain, loneliness, and lack of resources is…
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My son bought me a gratitude journal this past Christmas. I’ve always recommended the use of gratitude journals but, admittedly, thought that I didn’t need them since I trend toward realistic optimism as my normal modus operandi. However, this was the year that started out…weird. From the beginning moments of 2024, I started asking…
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I have had an ambivalent relationship with practice. The word alone conjures up many feelings. First, my eleven years of piano lessons were wrought with more pain than pleasure. Many hours my body yearned to have been running, bicycling, or playing sports, but I was living in an era when piano lessons were more common…
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At a very young age I learned that anger was bad and led to destruction and disconnection. When my dad’s anger turned toward me, I froze and drifted away to a place far away from that terrifying reality and that terror got stuck inside me. I remember coming home from teaching after having my second…
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I turned 50 this year. Can I share that there is a lot of pressure to be awesome by 50? You should take a monumental trip, have a huge party, have your children rise up and call you blessed. Good Lord! The pressure! My 40s were hard. In the last ten years, I have sat…
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These past few weeks have been quite eventful, filled with discussions that deeply resonated with me. It started with my book club, where we delved into topics such as the protests on college campuses, the current state of abortion rights, and the ongoing conflicts around the world. These conversations were eye-opening and thought-provoking, highlighting the…
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“Suck it in girls.” I tighten my core and smile as a group of mothers coach my friends and me on how to stand for our homecoming pictures. As a 33-year-old woman looking back on these photos, I wonder, what was there to make smaller? A 14 year old who had barely passed puberty, I…
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As I sit down to write this essay, I am wiping the smeared mascara that coats the skin just below my eyelashes. The black smudges cover up the bags underneath my eyes, which reminds me of the layers of exhaustion most of my days have held. My eyes aren’t smudged from crying this time, but…
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It was one of those Saturday morning moments for which I long. Both of my girls were in their playroom, happily occupying themselves (without screens!). There were no sounds of whining, fighting, or Peppa Pig jumping in muddy puddles. It was blissfully quiet. And it was that exact quietness that allowed me to more quickly…
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Decades ago, I was at the home of an older woman. She said, “My husband will be 70 this year, and we’ve started thinking about how to finish well.” This stuck with me, even though, at the time, I was comfortably middle-aged. This couple was well known in Christian circles. They had authored books and…
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