If one asks, I can give an account of my twenties pretty quickly. Transition has given no regard to my age or stage of life. Rather, it’s come on its own, as it pleases, most often in several forms at once. The chronology reads more like a T.V. series including, but not limited to: “The […]
I seem to be living the tail end of a dying life. According to the statistics, I am not the only one. I am not the only teacher who woke up one day and realized she could not possibly continue at the speed of the classroom with the course set to testing. It was killing […]
Let me just let you know up front: God isn’t asking you to bleed out. I do not believe that God is asking you to just sit there and take it, whatever it is. God is not asking you to bleed out slowly as you turn pale and feel the life slowly leaking out of […]
Last spring, I went back to work full-time, setting off something of a tumult of significant life changes. Our littlest started kindergarten. We left summer camp ministry (and our home of more than a decade), trading the life bucolic for a busy corner rental in town. Jim started two businesses, and he and I largely […]
When I was twelve I heard the voice of God. Like, literally. I know. I think it is totally weird too. I was the most awkward almost thirteen year old you could possibly imagine, and I heard the voice of God, behind me and to the left. I was at church camp. God told me […]
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 […]
I didn’t win the lottery last week. I know. I was surprised too. I mean, I knew logically that I wasn’t going to win. But if I am honest, in the messiest parts of myself (and isn’t that what the Mudroom is for?) I think I honestly believed I was going to win. Even though […]
The first few days of Advent, I felt irrationally angry. I tried to call it irritable or easily annoyed, but when I sat down to dig through it all what I found was anger. Advent is an invitation to the waiting, and frankly, I would like to decline. No thanks. Can’t come. Wish I could […]
A number of my friends are facing a crossroads at the moment asking the same immortal question as The Clash did in 1982: Should I stay or should I go? The pattern, I observe, goes something like this:Move to a new placeSettle into new placeEnjoy the new placeRESTLESSNESS. When I first became a Christian minister […]
Fifty of us invaded their driveway on Tuesday night. Card tables and ice chests and camping chairs decorated the pavement, along with stacks of paper plates and plastic silverware and Red Solo cups. The grill sizzled, red and gray coals in wait for chicken apple sausages and hot dogs from the local butcher. We scrawled […]
My nails were wet and half finished when I started ugly crying for seemingly no reason. The poor man who was painting them simply asked me if there was anything he could do. There wasn’t really. This wasn’t about the manicure. It was just that his chair was the first place I had sat down […]
My baby girl will be three in October. She’s into Pixar movies and puzzles and loves singing “Amazing Grace” with her pretend microphone. She’s mostly introverted. She’s already a Type A, and she’s growing more independent every day. She’s becoming a little lady right before my eyes, and it makes me weepy to see how […]
When my husband and I got married we moved from Miami, Florida to Wake Forest, North Carolina. We were beyond excited to get out of Miami. I wouldn’t say we hated Miami, I think we were just longing to see what was out there. We wanted to experience a different life from the one we […]
The last year has perhaps been the most difficult one of my life. Last summer, my husband Andy and I began to seriously discuss abandoning our life plan of forever living among the poor in the slums of India. As we talked, we stood on a rooftop garden overlooking the snowcapped Himalayas and the small […]
I didn’t mean to stay for three hours. And it was more than the rose leaf tea, more than the endless Super Why episodes she put on for my three-year-old. It was more than the familiar story of young love and marriage, or the moment we both confessed that our moms are our best friends […]
For someone who has been telling the internet all the things about all the things for the last few years there is one thing that doesn’t get a lot of press: my marriage. It isn’t that I haven’t tried. Like I write my girls a letter every year on their birthdays, I have wished to, […]
We pulled out of the zoo and immediately they started asking for more. “Can we go out for Ice cream?!” “Can we go out for dinner?!” “Oh please Mom! Oh please!” We’d just spent hours traipsing around the zoo, petting the wallabies, climbing the wooden train and tracking down the tigers. We weren’t there for […]
I spent the first eighteen months looking for signposts that life sprouts here in our new state. After a historically snowy winter last year in Michigan, I stalked trees for buds. I gently nudged snow from the neighbor’s crocuses with the toe of my boot, my soul hungry for a flowering something, anything that signified […]