My first place was a two-bedroom apartment with a little porch that overlooked the lush green of Richmond, Virginia. I was a single mom of a curious two-year-old, so an apartment on the third floor added an extra layer of complication to my coming and going, but I preferred the inconvenience over the sound of […]
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 […]
It’s been a beautiful fall. Using the word beautiful is insufficient, but when the sun shines bright through the trees, lighting the day with golden drops that float magically in the air and the weather in Chicago hovers in the mid-sixties, that description is all I have. Contentment is hard fought and so this bit […]
The lie is ingrained so deeply in my heart that I have to make conscious efforts to untangle my life from its clutches. This lie clutters my home, my very soul—the one that says comfort and contentment are one. Life in the Middle East was anything but comfortable, any sense of ease in life gone. […]
He stared at my back in the queen size bed we share. The inches between us loomed like a brick wall lined with barbed wire. I sobbed. He sighed. He must have felt as helpless as I did. I suffered under a border blockade which prohibited the entry of petrol, propane, and essential goods in […]
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 […]