Five Minute Friday

true

“So how are things going with you all lately?” I heard one mom ask another. And the other laughed, “Are you sure that’s a question you really want answered?” We need the friends who ask how we are and wait for the messy, convoluted truth. We need the friends who ask the questions that get…

she

She’s there behind me, every time I look in the mirror. Comparing her reflection to mine. She shakes her head, that one with the perfect complexion. That size 0 waist mocks me. I hear her disapproving voice inside my head every time I try to pull on a pair of jeans. The ones that won’t…

mercy triumphs

I am Javert. I see everything black and white. Justice, all must be fair. Yet, I am Eponine. Dirty and rotten. Ever failing. So desperately in need of mercy. Then there are my little Cosettes looking up at me. Innocent in so many ways yet already in need of grace. And I feel the struggle…

red hair

“Where did you get that red hair?” My brother and I heard the question over and over growing up, since we sported identical shades of dark red hair–mine curly, his anything but. “From both sides of the family,” we’d explain. We had three great grandpas with red hair, only one of whom we ever knew….

Worship

Sunday morning worship time isn’t always very conducive to worship when you’re a mom. I breathe a big sigh of relief if we even make it there on time and in one piece. And then I try to sing the right words at the right time while balancing a child in one arm and a…

Books

small

In the evenings, the small folk pile on the couch around and on top of my husband for story time. Dan Frontier, The Wizard of Oz, Johnny Tractor—now that they’ve finished the Little House series, it’s a different selection every night. And it’s always good incentive to finish their dinner so bath time can be…

a sense of belonging

“Was it hard, moving away from your family?” they ask. “Weren’t you homesick?” I always smile as I shake my head. I’d been homesick for him for so long that I couldn’t be homesick when we were finally making a home together. Yes, there were the adjustments of a new town, a new job, finding…

rhythm

rhythm

We fell in love to the rhythm of Country music. The cassettes and CDs we mixed for each other became the soundtrack for those years. The songs we listened to reflecting the ups and downs, the excitement and the tears. “Don’t Take the Girl” was the first Country song he played me, the summer of…

imaginary world

Dear Ruth, You visit an imaginary world each night in your dreams. One where Aslan is both King and Friend, where Caspian is your knight in shining armor, and where there is everything you could wish. “In my Narnia there is a door into Radiator Springs,” you explain,” and a door into Betsy and Tacy’s…

The End.

The End.