Moving On While Standing Still

Everyone prepares you for the feelings that accompany your child’s first birthday, but no one prepares you for the emotional tidal wave that hits on their second. Or at least no one warned me. My daughter turned two on Friday, and amidst the celebrations and fanfare, I found myself in tears nearly every day leading…

Read More

The Surprise Weekend

When life tosses you an unexpected moment, you have a few options. Examine your possibilities, jump ship, or quickly come up with a plan and say yes without dwelling on the potential risks. I tend to live my life aligned with the last one.  My good friend Alyssa and I had talked about getting away…

Read More

Eternity Presses On

Eternity pauses in the middle of this moment. In this creaking chair in the corner of this coffee shop with its cream brick and rounded windows on the north end of Main Street. From southeast Wisconsin, glaring winter is mostly gone. Faded ivy climbs the wall of the building next door as buds cling to…

Read More

The Treasure of a Few Seconds

What is a lifetime? If one averages a human life to 75 years, that is 27,375 days, or 657,000 hours, or 39,420,000 seconds. Those who served in the infantry during a war often say their time is 95% boredom punctuated by 5% terror. For most of us, our days are daily, ordinary, tick-tock time punctuated by occasional moments…

Read More

Surrender to the Now

Lists, don’t we hate lists? I mean I like them. They create order. They allow for a plan to get things done so we aren’t left in a bind later. I love them on one hand but on the other, they bring pressure and frenzy.

Read More