cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
I interviewed for my graduate program without planning to. You see, I was on a mission. Ever since watching a documentary on sex slavery in India that turned my world upside down, I had been meeting with a few counseling graduate students at my husband’s school. We combed through magazine ads and randomly drove down…
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Passion and Joy. Both are tricky words for me. I’m perhaps beginning to turn the corner on joy. I grew up in a family that claimed to be joyful but hid secrets of sexual trauma, addiction, and abuse. We were a happy, faith-filled family—or so I was told. There were good times, but they were…
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Learning about Spanish culture was one part of my college summer school program in Madrid, Spain, and that meant churches, museums, bullfights, and flamenco dances. There were also many visits to nightclubs—called discotecas—but I don’t think my professors considered those part of my cultural education. I thoroughly enjoyed every museum and would gladly return to…
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The move from our home in San Mateo, California to Los Angeles was the hardest thing I can remember in my early childhood. I was 8 years old, and yet in my body it seems like I was so much older than that. It was move number six in my short life and I felt…
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Only art penetrates the seeming realities of this world. There is another reality, the genuine one, which we lose sight of. This other reality is always sending us hints, which without art, we can’t receive. – Saul Bellow During my freshman year of college, I decide to register for a drawing class. We meet every…
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We were standing in the middle of her bedroom when a clap of thunder rumbled. The shades were drawn over the large windows, obscuring the view of the sprawling farm outside and the storm clouds overhead. When she lived here, Flannery O’Connor would have kept the shades wide open so she could watch her beloved…
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The night my husband and I found out we were expecting, I was drifting to sleep, dancing between consciousness and my dream world. Suddenly, my husband’s loud and insistent voice snapped me back to reality. “You’re getting an epidural!” he said eagerly, clearly falling asleep to thoughts about my impending pain 8 months later. I…
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I headed across campus and stepped into the student chapel. Spring was erupting, and doors were clumsily propped open to welcome in the breeze. I was on my way to the community outreach office where I led a team of fellow students. I had grabbed my mail on the way and saw an acceptance note…
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“You do not write the best you can for the sake of art, but for the sake of returning your talent increased to the invisible God, to use or not use as He sees fit.” –Flannery O’Connor I remember sitting in the post office parking lot that day, the heat of mid May filling my…
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