cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
The wilderness. That is where it feels like I am, especially lately. The wife of a dear friend I have known for 20 years passed away this week. She was in her late 30s. They have an 8-week-old daughter, their first and now only. Cancer took her within a month of her diagnosis. Two of…
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I have a black-and-white photo of my grandmother from the 1940s that I treasure. She’s dressed in pants and a flannel, kneeling in the grasses of an Oklahoma prairie, focused on something ahead. Balanced on her shoulder is a rifle of some sort. Her hair is short and curled, messy from the breeze. And though…
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My breath came in short, labored bursts, reflecting the intensity of the circuit workout my friend and I were making our way through. I told her I’d begun “hiking” on the treadmill set at a steep incline, practicing for the mountain hikes on the itinerary for an upcoming trip as couples to celebrate our friends’…
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It’s 2 a.m. The limbs of the trees outside my window are moving in the wind; the sound of the leaves rustling a bit is agitating. I can’t stop my thoughts, one after another, all in a similar vein, and none of them productive. “Did I have caffeine after 2 p.m.?” “Are these hot flashes…
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I thought I knew her type. It was the second time I had seen her come to church but the first time we ever interacted. She was a bit older, sort of mousy, and she walked up to me with a red baseball hat tucked under one arm and a John MacArthur Study Bible under…
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It’s 3 a.m., and I’m wide awake, tossing and turning like it’s my own signature dance move, all to the tune of grief and fear. Back and forth I spin on the deep gray sheets that prove there is no thread count that can stop my midnight moves. That tune is just too loud. The…
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When most of us think of a wise woman, we have this perception of someone who has it all together. A woman who is calm, thoughtful, grounded, and makes little to no mistakes. However, wisdom doesn’t always look that wonderful, especially not in the process of us acquiring it. Wisdom often comes after an accumulation…
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The podcast mic still shines from the back corner of the closet, wrapped up in chords and tucked away near storage boxes. I purchased it last year with some award money I received for my graduate thesis. I had been determined to put the money towards something that pushed me to keep creating. The only problem–and…
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When I was 10, I went to my parents separately and asked them if they ever doubted God’s existence. “No, never” was the response. I don’t remember if there was much curiosity after that. If there was, the lack of shared questioning led me to shut down and sweep my doubt and unbelief quickly and…
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“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…
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