Forget to Forgive

I certainly don’t find myself in 2022 with answers, but my focus is shifting. Instead of being mad that no one has sent the lifeboat to save me, I realize that the real question is more about how I ended up in that deep of water by myself in the first place.

Answering the tough questions

On a recent Sunday morning, I was driving home from walking with a friend when I called my husband. I wanted to see if he and the kids wanted to get ready to go out for a stroll around the neighborhood when I got there. I had just heard on the radio that it was…

The Teacher

Before she was born, I spent a lot of time looking at her 3D ultrasound photos trying to determine whether or not she would look like she had Down syndrome when she was born. I hoped and prayed that she would be spared the tell-tale almond-shaped eyes, flattened face, short neck and protruding tongue. The…

Blooming Weeds

Ellie was on her stomach in the middle of the kitchen floor, and I had stepped over her a hundred times. Our small, galley kitchen is a favorite play place for all of the kids, and the obstacle course they create with their bodies while I am cooking supper is nothing new. Her knees were…

Bridge Park

Standing at just over 6 feet, I am as tall as I want to be. You won’t catch me on a ladder. I don’t like standing in a chair to change a light bulb. I have been known to get dizzy when swinging too high at the playground. Sometimes even just standing at the top of the three small steps on my front porch looking down at someone on the sidewalk, I get a little panicked.

Sibling Revelry

January and February in Arkansas are hard on anyone who has to go outside. These months are especially hard when you have little kids who want to go outside. The sky is gray. The river is gray. The cliffs, mountains, trees and buildings taller than three stories are all gray because of the fog that…

“I don’t know how you do it.”

Resilient is a word that has been used to describe me lately. Maybe it was used before now and I wasn’t paying attention, but I am now hearing it a lot.   I have heard it so many times, in fact, that I decided to look it up in the dictionary to make sure I…

Bad Advice

Before he left for work, I made an egg for my husband Ben to eat for breakfast. It was just the two of us in the kitchen and no little ears were around to hear us talking. “I just don’t understand why you think that her learning will slow down or just stop one day,”…

Perfect v. Wonderful

I’ve been trying to think of some profound statement on which to end 2020, but all I have is this: We are still standing. (Well, sort of. Between the hours of 5:30 a.m. and 8 p.m. we are destroying, creating and just trying to keep each other from getting hurt, but at 8:02 p.m. we…

My Only Girl

“I am glad that Ellie is your only girl.” I hear that or a variation of that a lot. Honestly, I have thought it myself on occasion. The idea is that if Ellie had a sister, she would grow up trying to be like her. The fear behind it is that if her sister were…