encouragement for every season of life
Y’all, it snowed three times in the last 10 days. Three times! The weekend before last, it snowed so hard and the wind blew so fierce that our son got stuck in a snowdrift covering the entire road. He wasn’t the only one to do so. Thankfully, he did eventually make it home safe and sound. I don’t like spring snow,…
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Around this time of year, the intricately designed wildflowers in my Colorado town push through the stubborn, still-hard earth while weathering late spring snowstorms, hailstorms, and wildly fluctuating temperatures. And around this time of year, my thoughts turn to those youngest members of our military families. They push through hard times and weather storms of their own. Maybe this is why April is Month of…
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The $5 forsythia branches I bought at Sprouts look differently today than they did. When I bought them a month ago, the bony branches held canary-yellow flowers that sang bright and beautiful. But with time, the flowers are slowly shriveling and folding inward, giving way for new green growth. In nature, isn’t there always a death of sorts before new life? I don’t…
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Sitting in my living room, I watched the fog descend like a slow curtain after the final act of a play. Removing distant characters from my view, it reminded me to focus intently on those right in front of me. The close-up, high-up pines. The columbine pushing through the ground (too soon, probably). While I couldn’t see many of the far away objects, I could still…
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Yes, we know the calendar says it’s officially spring. But when we look around us, we still see a good deal of winter. When we look inside our heart and soul, we still feel a good deal of winter. Sometimes we long for a season to get with the program and change already. But like a bitter, frosty winter that has long overstayed its…
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For my family, the last week or so has been chock-full of vitamins C and D, cough medicine, Ginger Ale, and looking at each other in our same ol’ same ol’ pajama pants and t-shirts. All 5 of us managed to come down with the flu, and it was vicious. But we made it through and now we’re back to school, work,…
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On numerous occasions, I’ve shared what I’ve learned within a particular month of the year. Taking my cue from Emily who started this monthly series, it suited me well to share the silly and sacred, useful and just plain fun each month. Recently, Emily tweaked the “What I Learned” monthly format to instead reflect what we learned each season. This seems even more feasible and…
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Several months ago, I wrote about my struggle with fear on several fronts. Releasing a book found me “out there” to a greater degree, and while I don’t exaggerate my visibility or recognition, I still found myself afraid to be more fully seen. Then there’s the fact that raising 3 teens is chock-full of scary possibilities. Other circumstances poured into the fear-cocktail too….
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Well, these last couple of weeks have been chock-full of crazy. Among other things, every member of my family has been sick, the kids have had more going on than a variety show, and we’ve been doing quite a bit of planning for a big family trip this summer. Also, I meant to have this post out yesterday–this morning at the…
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Slowly, I slid down the wall while tears slid down my face. I glanced at the clock that read 9:10 am. The day was young, but I needed a serious do-over. I rubbed my tired head and thought about the last few weeks. As the calendar wound down on my husband’s deployment, my short fuse tightened up. My health struggles…
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To put it bluntly, there are seasons when it’s just dang hard being a person. And for this person here, seasons when I often feel this way are seasons when I struggle to fit in. At the beginning of this new year, we may feel that way on a broad political scale. And if we narrow down this notion of fitting in to a…
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We didn’t get all the snow our weatherman predicted, but I awoke this morning to a gray, pea-soup fog, the frosty kind that leaves the evergreens glazed head to toe. The fog stayed for a while, long enough for me to give the boys two extra warnings about driving to school. Go a little more slowly, please, since you can’t see too…
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