Faith

Somewhere between his graduation from Basic Training at Great Lakes, Michigan, and the Tuesday morning in Coronado, California—when one of our sons took off his numbered helmet, laid it down, and rang the bell signaling that he would not, in fact, become a Navy Seal—he showed us a book of mantras. Just a little book, with one page per original mantra, each written by one of his BUDS (Basic Underwater Demolition School) classmates. Our son was married and in his mid-twenties at the time, so his mantra was appropriately inspirational, grammatically correct, and it actually made sense. As I read the others—many written by mere teenagers—I thought, “No wonder in a few short weeks this class of 300+ men will diminish to

“Why is it a girl has to be so silly to catch a husband?” Scarlett O’Hara complains as she is being tightly laced into the barbaric contraption known as the corset. In order to catch the attention of a man, women of the Victorian Era believed that they must conceal their true shape. This seems ridiculous to the progressive women of the 21st century, but I wonder how many of us are still hiding? I have spent a good portion of my life hiding my truest self. As a former pageant girl (Miss America reject), I learned how to conceal aspects about my body that were…ummm… unpleasant. For example, right before the swimsuit competition, I would forget to watch where I walked

I was at church one Sunday, about a year after my husband died. I freely share that I rarely escaped a service sans tears. Every week I sat in the same sanctuary, same side, sometimes even the same seat, where I planted Sunday after Sunday with my husband, whose skin I could still feel beside me. Periodically, the tears were so abundant (read uncontrollable) that I would escape to the bathroom mid-sermon to just sob them out. On this particular Sunday, I was once again recovering from my failure to control my emotions, feeling pretty raw and down. Someone from my church ripped me a new wound as we walked out the front doors into the sunshine and she proclaimed, “You just

Before Joseph the dreamer arrived at the palace he was stuck in a pit. Talk about sibling rivalry! I may have tied my sister to a pole when she was little and left her in the dark, but I would never throw her in a pit! As the story goes, God gave Joseph the gift of interpreting dreams but before Joseph was the dream guru, he had a bent towards a cocky misinterpretation of God’s gifts. Often God gives us gifts and within our sinful nature we abuse them or use them for our own glory, much like the dreamer. In the play-by-play of his early dreams, Joseph’s family was bowing down to him. How nice. If we continue to read through Genesis, we will

I was totally going to rock this parenting thing… And then I had children. I read all the books on getting my baby on a sleep schedule and what to expect when expecting. But then I had children. I realized it is all a bunch of nonsense and everyone is a liar because God gave me the children that are divergent, the ones that all the books call “the exception to the rule.” I would have appreciated a book that covers topics like “what to do when your 3-year-old decides to go streaking through the neighbor’s yard”, “how to keep your child from going all Jedi with a lightsaber on the neighbor’s statue of Mary”, and “how to keep your toddler from

Last summer, my husband begged me to go to Montana. I told him I would go as long as we could have a professional tour guide and go “GLAMPING.” Instead, as life would have it, we ended up in Southern California (with a free place to stay; sorry Montana, maybe next time). These are my kind of people. Beach. All Day. I was thoroughly enjoying the beach with the rest of my people when my husband, Jamus, a.k.a. Indiana Jones, decided he wanted to go on a hike. (He just would not let it go.) Some dreams need to die. I said, “Okay honey, see ya when you get back!” He gave me the puppy-dog face—the one layered with guilt and much