Watch out for the quiet ones, they’ll surprise you
My mother had warned me. “Watch out for the quiet ones, they’ll surprise you.” She shook her head and smiled. When I was in fourth grade, a tall, quiet, redheaded boy walked across the classroom and handed me a homemade, red poster-painted Paper Mache heart on...
Commit, Commitment, Committed on Valentine’s Day
Commit is an appropriate word for Valentine’s Day for Keith and me. I’ve written about our love story for The Perennial Gen, but the short version is captured by Ann Voskamp in her newest book WayMaker, releasing on March 15*. “Detours are...
Forgiveness: February’s theme on The Perennial Gen
Forgiveness requires us to own up to our sins and confront our brothers and sisters in Christ when they do wrong. Today, I revisit a post about the former, published by The Perennial Gen last Friday as Learning to Speak Forgiveness, and a version of which first...
Lightening after taking down the lights
I took our seasonal lightening down this morning. Since Thanksgiving, the loft garland lights stayed on from the moment of our pre-dawn arising to bedtime. We’d come to expect that lightening; the lights looped over the loft railings greeted us every morning along...
The Possibility in Garden Making and More
Last week’s storm left my garden landscape bereft of possibility. Vanaprastha's square-foot beds, meadow, plantings and forest—all buried in ice-capped snow. And yet, in the dead of winter with the sun setting low on the southwest horizon, I am preparing for...
Distraction tends to get the best of me
The first distraction. My hairdresser texted me, asking if she could move my 12:30 appointment to later in the day—a text I saw only minutes before leaving for town. I texted her back, asking her what time, because I had a meeting later that day. No answer....