Grief

Waiting for Twilight

The summer before I got married Dave went away to teach at a program for brilliant young writers and I stayed in Pittsburgh, trying to finish my master’s thesis, which I hadn’t started. One night, there was a terrible thunderstorm, and my friend Rachael came over to keep me company. We drank mint juleps and […]

Abandoning God

We have been experiencing a bit of a thaw here in the Midwest, so the air has spring smell about it. The mud, the warmth, the melted snow, have fooled us all into thinking that spring is here. Growing up in Alaska, we generally had one thaw per year, in late April. Unlike other places […]

The Call to Let Go

Focused. I was moving up and down the aisles of Home Depot as quickly as I could. It was almost 1pm and the girls were hungry. My husband had my 2 year old, blonde curls surrounding her rounded face, and I had the squishy infant, nestled in the Ergo, head resting on my chest, waiting […]

Sitting on the Fringe

I pass by the holy water font without pausing, fifty-three years of reflex gone. I slide into a pew tucked in the back corner of the cavernous church, an arm’s reach from the flickering votive candles. An arm’s reach from the nearest exit. It was not always thus between you and I. I spent hours […]

I Switched Husbands

I got off the plane and in the car with 6 other women, perfect strangers. I was in Nebraska, a state I’d never been before nor expected to ever go. I was there as the keynote speaker for the women’s retreat, Jumping Tandem. Given the nature of my previous three years, keynoting was also unexpected. […]

Listen to the Prophets

Monday came faster than it should have. Bleary eyed I stumbled out of the bed covered by a bright yellow and pink comforter and more dolls than I could count. All signs pointed to yet another ear infection so I found myself at 2 a.m. holding her in her bed, propping her head upright with […]

Overcoming “Not Enoughness”

Several years ago, we asked thousands of people from all across the world to pray for a very sick newborn child. We hoped with all our hearts that God would perform a miracle. But when my best friend’s curly-headed baby boy died in her arms, she was launched into a season of incapacitating sorrow. God […]

Writing for Rescue

It’s interesting to me that The Mudroom’s first anniversary would fall on a month where the theme is Vocation, Career, Mission. When I was younger I adored Nancy Drew, the Bobbsey Twins, and the legendary Harriet the Spy. I took out books from the library on the history of the FBI. I pretended I was […]

If Only

The Mudroom is a place for the stories emerging in the midst of the mess. Our vision is simple: make room for people. If only I knew then what I know now . . . maybe I wouldn’t have suffered as much. If only I knew then what I know now . . . maybe […]

Free Write Friday: Finding Jesus

Two election cycles ago, I was a different person. Freshly married with a young baby, I lived in a New England town where almost 100% of my friends were made up with people from church and at least 80% of them looked like me. Houses were situated on .66 acres and life felt idyllic. The […]

Free Write Fridays

She was due to come home any minute. Eager to see her I had cookies fresh out of the oven. The candle in the bay window above my kitchen sink burned sweetly and twinkle lights lined the entrance to the mudroom. Her sisters were coloring contentedly at the homework table nearby and her favorite tunes […]

Revelation is Not a Guarantee

For a three-month stretch when I was seven or eight, I tried to learn how to pray. When I couldn’t sleep, I’d pull a children’s prayer book down from the shelf and move it to the crack of light that shone in from the hallway. I opened it up to the Lord’s Prayer and read […]

Straining for the Light

For a long time the threat of a new year brought with it an onslaught of more darkness, more enervating melancholy, more long, gray days ahead to suffer through. It was nothing to celebrate.  At the end of one of those especially difficult years I met Alece Ronzino online. She too had experienced a year (or more!) like […]

Top 10 posts of 2015

We hosted so many amazing posts this year. Here are the top 10. 10. When Good Girls Get Angry by Tanya Marlow I am the good girl, and good girls do not get angry. My mind shuts down with that one phrase. I should be the bigger person. It doesn’t matter that I feel wronged. Why […]

The Power of Enduring

It’s Thanksgiving. I’ve been cycling through this mixed state of hypomania and depression all Fall. Relief came at the beginning of the month, like a release on a pressure valve, giving my mind and lungs the room I needed to breathe and just . . . be again. The cycling has slowed but has not […]

Living in the In-Between

November blindsided me with its arrival this year. I know everyone says the years go by faster the older you get, but this year has rushed by with startling speed. By the beginning of November I usually have the kids gather up some of the many branches that have fallen from the sturdy trees in […]

Joy in a Minor Key

The holiday season is almost upon us, like a sweaty dog. The Christmas lights and jingly songs blare their good cheer into the darkness, but they don’t seem to penetrate it.  This year, we will decorate the tree together as a family, and I will try and snap pictures of my little boy looking angelic […]