There are many things to love in this lovely world and two of my favorites are history and storytelling. The two have many things in common and rely heavily on each other. Telling a story can teach lessons learned in history and what is history but the story of our past. I love how they interact and I believe they are both important to the world and its improvement but recently I have been ruminating on the differences between stories and history and how they should influence each other.
Continue reading Based On A True Story →

A couple weeks before Christmas, we were getting ready to host a long-anticipated cocktail party at our house. My husband and I were a great team trying to get Christmas lights up, clean the house, and prep food for the occasion. Unfortunately, our toddler’s molars decided to make a ferocious push for the surface and we had to juggle a miserable little girl on top of all of the chores. We felt helpless. We kept giving her homeopathy and snuggles whenever we could, but sometimes she was completely inconsolable. Our usually cheerful munchkin was as fragile as could be and even though I was anticipating a festive event that evening, I could feel myself fraying at the edges. She skipped her nap entirely—something she hadn’t done for months, so she was completely exhausted on top of the pain and there was nothing we could do about it except desperately try to make it to bedtime.

A little before dinner, she really fell apart. We had already tried all sorts of distractions and remedies throughout the day and were running out of ideas. I decided that she had been cooped up in the house for a while, so I was going to bundle her up and take her for a walk outside to look at Christmas lights. The battle that ensued was utterly unprecedented. It took both my husband and I to wrestle her into warm clothes as she kicked and screamed. My patience and heart were breaking. Continue reading Teething →

You know that feeling when you are working on a project, and it’s full of joy and excitement…it sails along, the ideas come freely, and when finished, you are so excited about the result that you feel like doing a little joyful jig?

Or the feeling when you are happy with your performance, and your place in the world around you…excited to share ideas or your presence with people? The feeling of having actually contributed to an event or gathering… of having connected with people in a real way?

I think many of us know those feelings. They are lovely feelings, I find they help me be creative, and keep me interacting with others in social/work settings.

Unfortunately, too often I instead know anxiety, worry, and a paralyzing or suffocating sense of inadequacy or despair about myself or my work. It lurks around many creative and social corners. I know others feel this too –sometimes every so often, sometimes frequently. Continue reading Confidence, Herod, and Stealing from the Lord →