Leave Their Part to Them
What One Great Loss Is Teaching Me About How to Live
“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.” ~Mary Oliver
I’ve spent much of my life living in fear of countless imagined tragedies—especially the untimely death of those I love.
Growing up, within the span of a few years, three children I was very close to lost one of their parents. The emotional devastation that followed taught me that people can disappear in an instant, shattering a world that had once felt happy and safe. My newfound awareness of the fragility …
The Day I Heard My Own Voice Coming Out of My Child’s Mouth
“Children are not things to be molded, but people to be unfolded.” ~Jess Lair
Growing up, I was often drawn to classmates who were soft-spoken and gentle. I admired how calm they seemed, because inside me was the opposite. I had a temper that flared at the smallest things.
I always gravitated toward people and situations that gave me a sense of peace, the very thing I didn’t have at home. As a child, I couldn’t understand why I craved that peace so badly. It took me becoming a parent to finally understand why.
My childhood home wasn’t peaceful. There
When Life Reminds You That Nothing Is Guaranteed
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” ~Albert Camus
A little over a year ago, I went to a bookstore on a cold night to meet a friend at the café. It’s taken me this long to finally write about it.
We had one of those conversations you need when you’re trying to make sense of things during the busy rush of life. The kind of conversation that makes you feel like you’re in the right place at the right time and you’re making progress.
I left the bookstore feeling like …
How to Stop Letting Anxiety Control Your Reactions
“Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.” ~ Bessel van der Kolk
For years, I thought my anxiety was a character flaw. I thought I could think my way through it. Reason with myself long enough, and I’d finally get to the other side of it. I never did.
Every time I thought I had made peace with it, something small would happen, and I’d be right back in that place. Heart racing. Hands shaking. Anticipating a fallout in something that hadn’t even happened yet.
In my previous marriage, I learned to read a …
When You Can’t Get Everything Right at Once
“I once heard someone say that a sign of enlightenment was the ability to say (and mean it) ‘Well, this isn’t what I want, but it’s what I got, so okay.’” ~Sylvia Boorstein
I once met a speed-cuber, one of those people who could solve a Rubik’s Cube in sixty seconds. Nice friendly young guy.
I hated him.
Not personally.
I hated him on the level of metaphor.
I hated him because I was jealous. Life always felt to me just like one big insoluble Rubik’s Cube. I could never get things under control on all sides at once. The …
How Being Authentic Taught Me to Love Myself
“Sometimes the hardest challenge isn’t receiving acceptance from God or other people; it’s receiving acceptance from ourselves.” ~Leigh Finke, Queerfully and Wonderfully Made
Growing up as a pastor’s kid, I had to hide who I was. I was taught that love from parents was conditional. I was taught that mistakes were met with a strict hand and harsh words. I was taught that I had to prove over and over that I was deserving of love.
As I grew up and learned more about the world around me and myself, I had to come to terms with my own sexuality …
