“Merry Christmas!” She stood at my dorm room door with a gift in her hand. It was an unexpected surprise and delight. My friend wanted me to open it right at that moment. I tore off the wrapping paper and there was a book. It was a book about loneliness. She looked at me, curiously […]
I am the easiest one in the room to take for granted. This gives me peace. I can explain. Like every human, mongoose, and senator, I was born with a box of tangled bulbs. Some light up every time: preference for the underdog, devotion to the elderly, proficiency at remembering the names of Tolkien’s elves. […]
We need your voices! This September, The Mudroom is launching a four-month series titled “Lost & Found: Stories of Belonging in a Bruised and Broken Body.” We desire to amplify the stories of those who’ve ever felt unseen, untethered, or set adrift from the Church—and those who have found or are finding, their way back. […]
I know it’s coming, but I’m not prepared. Fill in the blank with “it.” It could be dinnertime each day. I’m not prepared to answer the daily question, “What’s for dinner?” “It” could be the next difficult season up ahead, or it could the wildest season of joy. Why do I assume it will […]
First published July 13, 2016. I’m becoming my mother. Whenever she comes to visit us, her greatest ambition is to cook for our family. She asks which of her Korean homemade dishes we’d like to eat, and even prior to her stay she prepares in advance by shopping for groceries we can’t find locally. She’s […]
Last summer, my friend Heather and I were on a bike ride and met up with her friend, Todd. It was a beautiful day and we decided to sit and have a beer together on the outdoor patio of a restaurant. I had recently separated from my husband and during our conversation, Todd asked what […]
You know I am from the Midwest because when you ask me how I am, I answer you. This is, as my children’s minister pointed out to me, a trait I have passed on to my girls. Lucky for the Norman girls, she finds us charming. Don’t ask us how we are if you don’t […]
It’s been awhile since I’ve experienced it: vulnerability hangover. It’s a term Brene Brown coined for that feeling of, “Did I just share too much? Is she going to think I’m way too much of a mess?” It’s enough to make you throw up a little. But I felt that vulnerability hangover the other […]
I see them every day on the streets—the hungry. They stretch out trembling hands and plead for something to sustain them. A handout is not enough though. It may fill them for the day but they are back at the same bus stop the next morning, empty-handed and asking for more. I’ve been that person […]
I know what it must feel like to be a ghost. I am haunting the life I used to live but haven’t moved on yet, hanging out on the fringes of what I once called mine. I watch everyone around me go about their days as they always have but I am on the outside […]
I’m looking for spaces that are a homecoming. I’m realizing it’s not easy to find places of true belonging and it’s even harder to be a person who offers it. I don’t know a single person who doesn’t want to belong, but I know many who want to disconnect, to distance, to separate and […]
I should get bonus points when I surprise my friend Shoshana: she’s remarkably unflappable. If I’d told her I was getting a giant bat tattoo on my behind, she’d probably nod and say, “Oh, interesting.” But the other day on the phone, when I told her I love it when people sing “Happy Birthday” to […]
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. […]
In my father’s last days, his hunger vanished. As he shrunk like a hollowed out husk, his spirit being gathered by the very hand of God, his appetites died within him. The hospice nurse handed me a pamphlet about the stages of death and closed her palm gently over the back of my hand. “Fluid and food […]
I’m becoming my mother. Whenever she comes to visit us, her greatest ambition is to cook for our family. She asks which of her Korean homemade dishes we’d like to eat, and even prior to her stay she prepares in advance by shopping for groceries we can’t find locally. She’s a lady on a mission. […]
The lock clicks as it slides open, a loud pop announcing the beginning of the day. I had already been waiting a few minutes outside the door for the restaurant to open, rubbing my tired eyes and stretching my muscles that weren’t yet aware they were supposed to be working this early. Every Friday that […]
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 […]
I kneeled on the blue mat next to Sam’s bed in the skilled-care wing of the senior care facility. My elbows were on the edge of his bed as I leaned forward to hear him better. I felt like one of those old-fashioned needle point pictures of the children praying before bed, “Now I lay […]