I am not going to preach today about Josh Duggar and the TLC show 19 Kids and Counting. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. We’re all too addicted to these stories, of how the famous rise and fall. We have too much invested, in their fame in the first place, and then the […]
Author: Esther Emery
Why I Live in a Yurt, Off the Grid, in Idaho; Or: The Empty Space
Everything that ever needed to happen to me happened by accident. I don’t know if this is just my personality. Or if it is a deep truth that penetrates the whole world. But in my experience, intentional living isn’t particularly intentional. It’s been almost five years since my husband and I closed on a little […]
In Which This Is a Change, But It Isn’t a Goodbye
It was just over a year ago now that Tammy invited me to be a writer for the Mudroom. I had given her this passionate piece, “The End of Secrets,” and I believed very much in this idea, of a place for Christian writers to be messy. Also for messy writers to be Christian. And for […]
What Revelation Has To Do With the Cheshire Cat (And Other Things I Didn’t Know)
The thing about a revelation is, it’s something you didn’t know before. If you were already clued in on this, you should have told me, because I totally missed the memo. Knowledge is my thing. It’s, like, my thing. If I want to accomplish something, or I want to recover something, or I want to […]
When Your Birth is the Slow Kind
I have a book that I’ve been writing for a thousand years. (Are you really a thousand years old, you ask? Is that unnecessary hyperbole?) Oh, hush. I am. I must be, because I am quite sure that this book has taken me that long. A thousand years, yesterday. That makes me a thousand and a day, today. […]
Why I Wouldn’t Be Where I Am Without Reality TV
I just had to manually input the word “vlogger” into my spell check. I’m using that word a lot lately. After three years of writing words, on screens, and posting them on blogs, I’ve started monologuing to the camera. For most of my life I would never have dreamed that I would sit in front […]
Fire and Smoke
I was alone, at my off grid in-process homestead, when I looked up and noticed the haze collecting in the sky. By alone I mean alone with my small posse of dependents—three kids ages 1 and 4 and 6, plus at the time, a puppy. There wasn’t so much smoke that it made me worried, […]
Soup For the Skinny Girls (With a Recipe for Vegetable Soup)
FOOD IS NOT MY LOVE LANGUAGE, I said. To the computer screen. With maybe a little more feeling than I had intended. A writer friend had just invited me to participate in a writers’ group cookbook project, and of course I wanted to contribute. I love online community, and I love my hard-earned kitchen skills. […]
The God Who Sees
I’m the girl you know who overplays the role of prophet. Cassandra and I would have gotten along just fine. Sometimes I warn people in conversation, I’m just that girl, who gives unwanted perspective all the time. I shoot from the hip. If you want sweet and sugarcoated, go play with someone else. But […]
When Your Heart is Yearning For a Better Father
I don’t talk to my father very often. On Father’s Day I consider the choices. To send a card? Or not? Should I lean into the wound? Or get myself out clean? Is it time to press into the brokenness of relationship? Or it is time to gather myself and walk away? There isn’t […]
I’m Not Going to Preach About Josh Duggar
I am not going to preach today about Josh Duggar and the TLC show 19 Kids and Counting. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. We’re all too addicted to these stories, of how the famous rise and fall. We have too much invested, in their fame in the first place, and then the […]
That Wild Road
We were standing together on the southern slope when she showed me where the roof came clean off of her neighbor’s barn. Her own barn had lost just a bit of trim, she said. Though it did clock her mother-in-law on the shoulder as they came out to check on the animals. Still. They were blessed. I had […]
Why I’ll Never Put A Lily At My Mother’s Grave
When I was married, I gifted with great ceremony white lilies to three older women that I loved. My blood mother. My stepmother. My mother-in-law. I carried the long and elegant stems across the pebbles toward their wooden folding chairs. All three of them died young. Cancer, cancer, and a freakish surprise sort of thing […]
The End of Secrets
I am a blogger who is good at keeping secrets. Believe it or not. Even in this world of the overshare and the commodification of experience, even through two years of writing out my life, still: I’m like a vault. I have held on to certain things I do not tell, and I have kept […]