I wrote this four years ago. It felt appropriate to update it now. 2017 – Confession ~ Our family received a holiday fruit basket last week. I am 47 but I acted like a 4-year-old upon receiving it. Ungrateful. I delayed thanking the gift-givers (a couple) – and the husband called me to check if it was received. Sheepishly, I thanked him profusely and apologized for being late with thanking them. He shared with me that his wife had had surgery a few months prior – and the co-pay had come due. $35,000.  Instead of dragging out the medical payments, they had paid the balance. I didn’t ask how –…

Twenty-nine years ago, I was a newly minted wife and mother. I had a toddler daughter and a son in my womb, ready to be born within days. I should have been happy – fulfilled – but I knew deep down, that something was missing. It wasn’t something though. I had tried all the things that I thought should fill this nagging aching void. I had tried to fulfill myself through education, marriage, family, even a false religion that elevated me to goddess status. I had taken a lot of wrong turns before marriage. Done things and said things that I was not ( and am not) proud of. As…

I rarely write about things I see in the news media, as I know how there are two sides to every story. Sometimes there are three or four sides. This is a little different, as this topic hit home on a visceral level. A few months ago, I read that a firefighter in Glastonbury, Connecticut uttered these words when confronted about overdosing addicts. “I think you get rid of f*****g NARCAN, and when people overdose, you let them die.” Narcan is also known as Naloxone and is a medication administered in an emergency to counter decreased breathing when an addict is dying from an overdose of opioids. Unfortunately, the firefighter’s…

A neighbor and dear friend recently suffered the loss of his beloved son, only days before Thanksgiving. It is in bitter moments like these, I am reminded that the first Thanksgiving celebrated in the United States was rooted not only in gratitude but grief. One hundred and two passengers sailed aboard The Mayflower, landing at Plymouth, Massachusetts in November of 1620. I live a stone’s throw from Massachusetts and November is an unforgiving month for the growth of food or warmth of the body. Of the original one hundred and two passengers, only fifty-three would be alive after the first winter had ended. I’m a writer, not a mathematician, however,…

Tonight, at bedtime my ten-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter wanted me to read a bible story. I chose the story in the book of Mark where Jesus calms the wind and the waves.  “That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped.   Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we…

I saw a t-shirt for sale that had this written on it. “Dear Monday, everyone hates you.” As a homeschooling mom of a large family, I can sometimes really agree. However, you have to be willing to take what God sends you and work with it. The good. The bad. And the dog barf. Monday mornings at our house always start slowly, with lots of moaning and groaning and complaining about schoolwork. Then the kids tell me to stop it and put a smile on my face. Just kidding, the moaning is mostly from the children. I began the day with bible study – trying to share with the kids…

Pray and Speak Boldly Two weeks from now it will be a year since I answered one of the most frightening phone calls I have ever received. The police called to report they had found my daughter.  She struggles with opioid addiction and I had not heard from her. I feared the worst. No parent wants to outlive their child. I am no exception. I answered the phone with my heart clenched tightly. When the police officer told me that she was in the hospital, all he would disclose was that my daughter, “Didn’t feel good and that her arm hurt.”  My heart began beating again. She’s alive. When my…

On December 13th, 1885, a young woman living in a small mountainous Italian village gave birth to a baby boy she could not afford to raise. The next day, she stroked his dark hair and watched in loving fascination as his tiny hand curled around her pinky finger. She gently wiped her breastmilk from his mouth as he began to fall asleep, his tiny eyelids pink with fatigue. Desperate to freeze time, she watched as the sunset at 4:30 p.m. She waited another hour and a half to leave where she was staying as the moon was half full and she could not risk being seen. As she stepped outside…

I always find it disappointing when people say to me that the bible isn’t relevant to modern people. As if the inner workings of the heart of men have somehow radically evolved across the centuries.  Consider crowdfunding. It’s easy to believe it’s a modern invention. Sort of mankind’s evolution into good intentions. If you look up the history of crowdfunding, the internet will tell you it began with the British punk rock band, Marillion.  In 1997, the band asked their loyal fan base to help fund their next album, Anoraknophobia, by purchasing advance orders. In exchange, the fans who bought the album were mentioned by name in the liner notes.…

I have a confession. I’m a procrastinator by nature. I need help staying on task and organized. I recently shared with a neighbor that I have a daily and weekly chore list with little boxes I check off as I complete a task. He remarked, “You don’t strike me as a list person.”  I smiled and replied, “I’m not.”  I asked my husband to write the lists for me, to help me remember what needs doing each day to keep our home tidy. My husband recently said to me, “You’re not a planner, are you?”  I laughed and said, “You’re kidding me, right?  You asked me to marry you eleven…