(Not) Home For the Holidays
As the fourth out of five kids, I watched as my older siblings tried out all the scary things first, like getting their driver’s license or going away to college. I greatly benefited from all their advice before my first time at the dentist, taking the ACT and what to wear for my first job […]
When You Can’t Be Together
It was Christmas Eve. I sat on the floor next to my 10-year-old grandson in his family’s near empty apartment to say goodbye. They were leaving early Christmas morning. Suddenly, his body started shaking with silent sobs. That did me in. It was one goodbye too many. Later that evening my younger daughter and I […]
Courage? Wisdom? Acceptance? Me?
Did Reinhold Niebuhr have loved ones living across an ocean? It seems to me he must have when he wrote the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” I was not very good at “accepting” […]
This Week’s Theme: Letters from Home
We are so, so thankful for the moms, daughters, grandmas and sisters (and dads and brothers and grandpas too) who cheer us on from home. They encourage, send care packages across countries and oceans, email pictures of snow when we are missing different seasons. They stand on the other side of security waving goodbye over […]