cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
This morning, I went back to church. For more than two years, like many, I have been provided with and found reasons to attend church virtually or, truthfully, not at all. It has been a sort of rebellion. Rebellion against decades of church involvement and all the forced Sundays of my youth. A rebellion against…
Read More
“Can we take a moment and breathe a minute? I need to pause to feel what all of this means.” I spoke as I glanced at the faces of my two friends on the Zoom screen. A tear slid down my cheek while deep disappointment registered in my chest. Massive anticipation seemed to slither out of…
Read More
“You are one of the bravest people I know,” I squeaked, as tears filled my eyes. She kept my gaze as I spoke a blessing over her cross-country journey into the unknown. Without concrete work and with very temporary housing in place, she was moving back to L.A. after a long COVID relocation. A bright…
Read More
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” Psalm 23 speaks to me loudly as I continue to walk down this path that seems so familiar to me. It is not one I would have chosen to traverse; yet it is one that I find myself on. One could say that…
Read More
Waking up is the worst. Not from bed, but from what I can only call “COVID slumber”: the choice I made sixteen months ago to tone down and tune out much of my life in order to shelter in place, as we were told. I, like many others, rocked sweat pants and dress shirts. I…
Read More
I didn’t realize how long I had been holding my breath. The sun beams through the oval-shaped window of the plane. I consider if an oval is the correct shape to attribute to an aircraft window, and I reflect on my six-year-old daughter’s tears yesterday at not getting her shapes correct in online school. I…
Read More
Every day for the last year, I put my hair into a long ponytail and adjust a mask over my face. Never before has such a small piece of cloth meant so much. It’s a daily reminder to me of how life has changed.
Read More
It was dinnertime on a Sunday, which means the countdown to bedtime had started a little early and was slightly more enthusiastic than normal. I had been craving cauliflower for a while, which isn’t something I’m particularly proud of, but here we were. My husband and two daughters looked on as I picked up the…
Read More
Finally. After weeks of pain shooting up my spine and into my neck, I was finally getting some relief. I had been okay with makeshift back-cracking mechanisms—over my desk chair, bending over with my arms pushing against the wall until I felt a crrrriiiickkk go up my back—but that could not go on any longer.…
Read More
COVID-19 has revealed some things about myself. There are times I get this familiar panic feeling rising up in me—the same kind of feeling I’d get before my children were born. I was excited about a new baby coming, but also terrified that something might go wrong during the birthing process. The only words I…
Read More