Dear Grandma, Every spring a few weeks before your birthday, your wooded lawn starts filling with little blossoms we’ve always called “spring beauties”. When we were children, we’d gather the blooms with wild abandon. You’d help us wrap their delicate stems in a moistened paper towel covered with saran wrap to keep them fresh as…
The girls had been looking forward to it for weeks. And that’s only because I hadn’t told them sooner. With such exciting plans as these, I tried to keep it from them as long as possible. Because I knew the moment they found out all I’d hear was, “How many days until Anja’s wedding?” Not,…
Farmers wives are privy to a lot of little-known secrets of the agricultural industry. We could tell you how much of a man’s self worth is wrapped up in the state of his fields and the color of his tractors (ours are green, except for the Ford that was my husband’s great grandfather’s). We could…
I think every woman should schedule a photoshoot once in a while. It’s too easy for us to believe the lies we tell ourselves about how we look. We take for granted that others are as critical as we are when we look in the mirror. We’ve forgotten how to see ourselves through the mirror…
The Mommy Cup is a children’s book with a message that’s just as much for mommies as for their little ones. Heather Ruskievicz combines soft color illustrations that children will love with a simple story line that will speak right to a mother’s heart. The story introduces us to a mommy named Maria who lives in…
“What’s the forecast looking like?” my farmer husband asked the moment he walked in the door. I checked it. Again. It was still saying rain. And we still had wet hay on the ground. It’s the same every fall. It’s time for a third cutting of alfalfa and we need a week of good weather…
We went Shoebox shopping this morning. Shopping with three children in tow is exhausting in itself. But when they are each allowed to help select gifts to fill a shoebox, it’s a unique but enjoyable challenge. We’ve been talking about it for months. Our oldest daughter, intrigued by the idea that you could choose to…
I knew it was coming. After seven years of marriage, it was bound to happen. It was only a question of which one would go first. But when I heard the strange banging, I knew. I grabbed my cell phone and pressed speed dial 2, turning it on speaker phone while it was still ringing….
Her ring sparkled as they walked in. He was tall, with a bearing and a haircut that spoke of service to our country. But they were decked out in the official “country” garb around here: Carhartt jeans and Cabelas hoodies. Everything about them was new, even to the relationship, it seemed. “Do you like Honeycrisp…
“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’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…
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…
The End.
The End.