When we first moved to Dallas, we made some colorful friends who were actors at Scarborough Renaissance Festival- King Henry and a Contessa, to be exact. During October, the Scarborough Fair grounds become a spooky maze of haunted houses, Scary-oke, expensive food vendors, and a throng of tweens looking to snuggle up to their crush …
Tuesday, 7/11/2023, Nashville Airport 2:08 pm I wasn’t anxious about this until we popped open the back of my sister’s van. It’s not the actual flying that concerns me. The Baby is almost chronically un-anxious, as in, he is not anxious even when he probably should be, like when he tries to drown himself by …
January 23, 2023 Dear Mr. Sedaris, My son, {The Baby}, came screeching into the world via an emergency c-section at 26 weeks- a two-pound potato whose vital organs needed lots of assistance to keep him alive. I met him for the first time four months later, when his birthmother invited me to visit the Neonatal …
I remember talking about atheism and agnosticism in my world religions class in high school. In my little conservative corner of West Texas, we didn’t spend much time talking about the godless heathens, but I remember the description of Clockmaker god, who designed the world, perfectly calibrated all of it’s gears and dials, and then …
Let me preface the beginning of this series with a few things: I’m gonna take weekends off for my “writing every day” goal in November. I can do this because I’m a grown ass woman and I want to. I want to explicitly acknowledge that I have AMAZING parents who did the best with what …
Last August, my little family met my parents in Estes Park. We have done this trip every couple of years since I was a kid. We stay in cabins and hike and explore and breathe in the fresh mountain air. COVID made things a little different, but we were just happy to escape Dallas for …
Well, today the Wise family said hello to a new bed and goodbye to two of The Baby’s teeth. A few months ago, we started the laborious process of getting a SleepSafe bed approved through The Baby’s insurance because his crib had become unsafe. He was able to stand up in it and when he …
The Baby turned five this week. It’s crazy. All of those five years tend to blur together. After all, time flies when you’re drowning in medical chaos (just kidding…kind of). On the night of his birthday, our dinner conversation centered around remembering all of his firsts- the first time he sat up, the first solid …
(You can listen to an audio version of this post here.) I went to David’s Bridal today to purchase a bridesmaid’s dress for a friend’s wedding next summer. She had a dress already picked out in the system so they pulled her profile up and I followed the very nice saleslady to the racks laden …
(I realize this is very lengthy so I have strategically placed pictures of smiling animals throughout the piece so that you can mark your place if you need to take a break and come back to it. At my sister’s suggestion, I’ve also made an audio version of this blog. You can download/stream it by …
I grew up in West Texas- land of wide-open spaces, sky high teen pregnancy rates, and a colorblind racial ideology that masks racism instead of confronting it. In colorblind ideology, it is impolite to talk about someone’s race. I remember hearing a story about a friend who was trying to tell her son which store …
I just got back from San Francisco. I went to (hides face) a Christian conference. I found myself hesitant to tell people that it was a Christian conference because of the connotations of that. My sense is that many Christian conferences are lame attempts at pep rallies for God, the adult version of church camp, …
“What was I thinking?” I thought as I stared forlornly into the mirror. I should have known better than to impulsively stop at the hair salon directly adjacent to the Tom Thumb, still clutching my bag of avocados. I was hoping for a cute haircut before I left on my 10th anniversary weekend trip. Instead, …
I was a mere 21 years old when I got married. My uncle officiated our wedding. Before the wedding, my then-fiancee, now-husband, Alex, and I drove down to Corpus to do some premarital counseling sessions and stay with my aunt and uncle. After one of these sessions, Alex and I got ready to leave and …
I went to a vigil in Balch Springs for Jordan Edwards last week. It was everything you would want a vigil to be- beautiful and sad and moving and comforting. Like most, I was horrified by Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice’s deaths. I have been deeply affected before by deaths caused by police brutality, but …
i’m going to Syria over spring break…. thank you JESUS Continue reading
This Saturday = February 4th = Josh and I have been dating for a year. Continue reading
So another college student who’se working at Still Creek asked the kids what they thought life was about. I saw one of the essays today laying around. It said, “The purpose of life is stupid. God put us here so we can suffer.” I almost cried. Right there. In the middle of Bible Study. It … Continue reading
Look at my sister. hubba hubba Continue reading
Ayer (yesterday) I read in John 4 about the time that Jesus talks with the Samaritan woman at the well. I’ve probably heard it 100 times and it’s kinda cool cause Jesus knows that she has five husbands and He talks about living water but it never really struck me as something that I could … Continue reading
Hip-Hip Hooray Today for these fine folks: Emily U for our jigsaw puzzling super skills, her musty dorm room, and our defiance in the face of really boring text books Elizabeth for laughing with me at the manaquin whose clothes caught on fire when the manaquin stopped dropped and rolled in our chem lab safety … Continue reading
addendum to the last entry: tonight i was getting ready for bed and brushing my teeth in the bathroom. i heard joe say my name. i was irked because i was in my pj’s and eliz had let him in without checking with me first. i opened the door and saw that joe was not … Continue reading
So I went walking today at the park and I took my rio mp3 player and in all my self-contemplation, I put into words something that I had known about myself but never been able to express. I don’t have my own music style. I steal/borrow from other people. So I decided to give credit where … Continue reading
I believe it’s in the movie Hope Floats where the grandmother says, “My cup runneth over.” I love that phrase. And right now, in this moment, it is true. My cup does runneth over. God has blessed me with a group of people to support me that I could not have asked for. I love that … Continue reading
So, Josh and I got together last night to talk about our bad weeks. When I told him about mine, he laughed. Instead of getting mad, I reconsidered how I was feeling about things and I realized how silly I was being about the two things that are hurting right now in my life. God … Continue reading
welderbeth 