When we started our babies on solids, we started off with the recommended rice cereal, rice porridge, bananas, avocados, and the like. We were told not to salt their food, to start them on bland basics so they could get used to solids after a diet of formula. We started with a simple carb, then […]
Books are like soulmates— friends who meet us at just the right time and connect to our souls more deeply than we had anticipated. They teach us, help us, inspire and shape us. Madeleine L’Engle says, “Stories are able to help us become more whole, to become Named. And Naming is one of the impulses […]
I’m THAT person, the one who’s constantly distracted by letters, words, print. It could be a menu or a magazine cover or a newspaper. Sometimes I have to remind myself that it comes across wrong, I look nosy or inconsiderate when glancing at words that are written on something that’s not mine. Oops. I can’t […]
A few weeks ago, I turned in the manuscript for my first book to my publisher, Finding Holy in the Suburbs. I suppose there had been others — scrawled words in composition notebooks and spiral notebooks, abandoned stories where I gave up writing and thought I could only write about writing, and a PhD that approximately […]
“You see these spots?” my dad would ask, pointing at my nose. “They aren’t freckles. They’re print that’s rubbed off from having your nose stuck in a book.” He wasn’t far from the truth. I read voraciously as a child. I took a book along with me everywhere—just in case. Just in case I got […]
My oldest son, who is almost five, carries a sea turtle stuffed animal with him just about everywhere he goes. Sea turtle chats with the lobsters at the supermarket, goes down the slide at the playground, and provides a comfortable conversation starter when he’s surrounded by adults and other children at church. With sea turtle […]
Some people have spiritual awakenings. I have book awakenings. Now, don’t get me wrong: I love me some Jesus (and more importantly, some Jesus loves me), but for purposes of this post, books have oftentimes been the soul-waking catalyst in my story. I learned to read in the first grade, a fact that felt neither […]
The first book to ever hold this type of “keepin” power for me was, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I slept with this book under my pillow every night. I was even willing to pay the “lost” fine fee that my middle school library would eventually charge me for not returning it. […]
My friend Melissa has a way of being kind that also makes me think. We were out for coffee, talking about books. Specifically: about my anxiety about wanting to read more. By most measures, I read a lot, but with the advent of smart phones and parenthood, I read less then I used to. Recently, […]