Owning Your Space (& The Art Within You)
I had come to the class to teach public speaking. But I had not come to teach about being perfect at it. In fact, as I shifted my weight side to side and stumbled over my um’s, I pretty much broke every public speaking rule in the book. They had signed up to learn about Speech. I had signed up to teach about courage. It was two years ago from the podium, I stood in front of homeschooled high-schoolers to teach. I hadn’t rehearsed a speech or had laid out a rigid curriculum. Instead, I remembered my own...
read moreSecrets & Fear Are Friends
“Try as we might to control our discomfort by containing our inefficiencies or clawing for answers to all our questions, we simply won’t ever have 100% comfort as long as we’re human.” — Amy Hunt, Founder and Vision Leader, C’est La Vie: The Magazine I’ll never get used to the way secrets are locked up. The way they make you cower under their power. The way they hiss horrible-nothings in your soul. You believe they’re better behind closed doors to never see light of day. There was...
read moreYour Super Power to Reclaiming Your Gifts (& Your Life)
My family and I dodged through a congest Dallas. Just earlier, we witnessed where rain had swollen creekbeds until they raged with rapids. But now cars jammed together like a snake of metal along highways, participating in the normal big city traffic. I clutched the arm of our car door as semi’s bee-bopped between lanes, without so much as a care to cars. I pointed my finger, “There, there,” along the interstate, “We need to get over!” Then, I pretended the manic traffic wasn’t just one white line...
read moreWhen Your Calling is to Notice the Details of Your Life (#wholemama & Shalom Living)
I stand at the center of life. That happens to be my kitchen island as I type. This is where my two boys run in and out the back door, in plain view. Where sun bounces heat off a swath of white patio, refracting its bright light onto our living room walls. From the dining room window, a male Cardinal jumps near a female on the kids’ trampoline as she moves out of reach. Ducks waddle across the Bermuda. They are in search of bugs or bird feed dumped to the ground from greedy squirrels. A wind caresses the Red Maple leaves,...
read moreThe Catapult of Writing (Or Why You Should Write Anything At All)
I wish I could say Spring quietly slipped out like a visitor that’s too awkward for a goodbye. Instead it banged pots, tripped over furniture, and broke some china. I tried to enjoy every moment. Tried to savor the soggy ground that sagged under it’s own weight. Tried to appreciate my watered (drowning) Wave Petunia’s and Roma Tomato plants. Tried to not resent the overcast darkness of drizzle and rivers in my front yard. But I came up a little short. I preferred it over the drought of 2011. But after days,...
read moreOn Motherhood Gone Terribly Wrong, Priesthoods, & City-Slicking Farm Wives
The sun is bright today. After days, weeks, and months of rain. I’m still reveling in the glory of sunshine. We live on a farm. And our neighbors live on farms. While the rain is a blessing, the saturated grounds negatively impacted work. However, it positively impacted hay production. But the grass is high. Very high. Cutting it now is a huge undertaking. Since most hay producers are already behind the power curve, this results in fast, furious work to be done over the next several weeks. But I digress. This...
read moreLiving the Small Creases of Your Life
There are times you live in the hidden nooks-n-crannies of your life, as if it were a shrinking back. But that’s not entirely true. It’s really a folding into your life. One that’s necessary and truer. It may feel you stepped off the stage, as if you were an actor in a familiar bar. Yet, nobody knows your name anymore. Life grew smaller. And how does smaller grow? Yet you know it does, in it’s own backwards kind of way. There are times you feel forgotten like a wild thing left to grow in the woods....
read moreWhat Shakes My Core (My Big-Girl-Pants Moment Right Here)
I was the shiny new girl. The one who came most anytime of a school year when growing up. Middle, beginnings, or endings, did not matter really. Most every grade was in a different school. I loved it then. I could change. Be a chameleon. I graduated with strangers, or in the least, casual acquaintances. That was when I first, really ached for community, for a family of friends to celebrate memories I never shared. I still love moving. It energizes my soul. I’m sure my penchant for it is quite unhealthy. But I’m now...
read moreMy Ebenezer in Writing
This is where it all began. This was the beginning of not letting fear rule me. From teenager to adulthood, I had hidden my work in secret places. Then one day, about 15 years ago, I burned it all. I destroyed every poem, short story, all my work, and I began fresh. I became a blank slate. With nothing. No promise to ever write one tittle of a word or anything, ever again. I started over. And I just lived. For a season, it was enough. But it wasn’t long, several years later in fact, that words began to speak...
read moreWhen You Fear (or Resist) the Good Gifts in You, Make War
Hell came against you, somewhere on the way. It’s as if the sky has fallen on your head. Maybe it will knock some sense into everything, into you. The thing you’ve been saying now whips backwards. Your own words mocking you. Failing just one hour ago, they become ghosts that haunt. You know how how you did well? Done good for one whole blessed, single day and even two? You believe in resurrections but few people tell you how hard the dying is before you rise again. Maybe it’s true. You need to spend...
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