These words have leaked out of me, like tears trickling down the crevices of my heart. It’s been an all-consuming few weeks. I owe friends updates, but it feels as if there’s no space for conversation when I’m taking in heaving breaths of air just to survive and dodging sorrow’s persistent arrows. At the same time. Time is in such […]
The Stones I Carry and a Band of Saintly Women
“With or without our permission, with or without our understanding, eventually suffering comes. Then the only question is how to endure it, how to accept it, how to cope with it, how to turn it from dross to gleam.” Joan Chittister, The Liturgical Year A saint (noun) is a virtuous person, particularly good or holy, […]
The Dust Bunnies and the Broken Hearts of Mental Illness
I say the things aloud. It is an effort. I want to make them come true. “I will clean today. I will cook dinner. I will go to the bank.” Even as I speak the words I know how unlikely it is that I will be able to do more than sit here. Breathing under water is life […]
The Silent Scream: Depression & Autopilot Mom
For months I have been unable to smile honestly. When I think about it, that I need to smile so that people don’t wonder, I can’t make my face do it. My husband asks if I’m okay. Yes. I will always say yes, unless it’s really grave. But it has not been life and death […]
I Poke at My Heart To Know It is Still There. I Hold on To Belief, Clutching.
I have so many things going on. The heaviest specifics, I don’t dare to write about. These are Heavy, hard days of—if not Suffering —Pain. But I know so many, many people going through Pain. In that, we are not alone, but being a writer and photographer comes with a price. I know what’s happening […]
{My Silence, Depression’s Lies, and Faith}
I LIVE depression is a liar wailing. it hates you as much as you hate it. and you know, you fear eventually the battle will be won. you may not be the victor. still you will fight the raging storm inside your brain. to stop would be suicide. life goes on, you cannot stop for Love remains. […]
{Just Like Me: Being Introverted in the Church}
If I could have demanded anything for my shy and wary child, would I have begged God make him less cautious? Would I have wasted a wish, a prayer, even a thought on that part of my personality that I hate and have come to tolerate. Make him less afraid. Make him less like me: petrified, […]
{This is for the Dads. I See You}
This blurry pic, a copy of a copy, is my father holding my son. You cannot see it from this cropped copy but they are sitting on the floor. This is for the dads, I see you. Recently at wedding of two friends it hit me. I’m past the feeling of broken-heart-ache when I see […]
An Ode To Joy: When Chasing Significance, Ministry, Motherhood, & Alcohol Isn’t Enough
My daughter thinks she Knows My Dreams, she pushed hard recently trying to get me to admit them. Telling me “Go to seminary and be a pastor that writes, mom. That’s what you want. Just do it.” It’s so easy for her to say, I think to myself, with my incessant dissatisfaction and oh so many fears. […]
Fear’s Come, Knocking
I rise early As pain wakes me, it is impatient to begin. It’s burning in my leg. I’m despondent, knowing Fear’s come, knocking Licking up my tears, FEAR holds me tight, Comforts, As I sit with her. I know FEAR Like an old friend. I’ve never known much else, than this devilish companion. My heart […]
Life is not Pass or Fail: A Mother’s Day Remembrance
I have always seen “weakness” as a defect and here on this blog I say a lot about what I consider to be my own weaknesses – the narrative playing in my head and here on these pages for years has been a fear that I am too broken and weak to be useful at all. […]
My Crazy Slow Surrender to Life’s Beauty
Life is worn and tearing, and this makes me profanely angry. I hear a baby cry in the distance, just a simple need for succor and in an instant, I’m filled with Memory—Grief for What’s Lost. For when it was my breast, feeding the cry, when mine were young, I did not understand The Wonder. […]
