A year ago, my husband renewed our vows at sunrise. This week, separating belongings, I found the card he'd given me that day. So much can change in a year.
grief
The Sun Rises and Sets on an Author
There is a white wicker loveseat on the sand. It does not belong there… and neither do I, quite, living in three pasts at once through three books. A sunrise spot visited at sunset, and the quiet realization that I've been so busy surviving — and so busy writing about God — that I forgot I was made to delight in Him.
Firsts After the Lasts
This was a week of firsts — the kind I've come to know by heart this season. Working through every first after what I hadn't known would be lasts. The knife I reached for was packed. So I reached for my own, the one I had before him. What you put in the ground is never what comes back up.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Frost wrote eight lines about gold and grief, and I've been teaching them every year. This week, I learned what he didn't say: the gold was real. It just doesn't stay.
He Knows My Name
I brought Mama Marci to the sunrise. She couldn't see the heron. She trusted me. Fearfully, Wonderfully, and Bipolar-ly Made releases next Tuesday, April 14.
Going Through the Motions
I don't feel alive, but I was grateful for breath in my lungs. For quiet. For stillness. I keep showing up. Sunrise. Gym. School. Sea glass. Repeat. The daffodils came back, so will I.
The Tree That Bends but Doesn’t Break in a Hurricane
I woke up this morning a Palma. On the fifty-fourth anniversary of my grandmother's death and the third of Joshua's, I walked to the water at sunrise carrying a name that is mine again. Here's what I know about palm trees: they're designed for hurricanes.
What the Fire Couldn’t Touch
Mama Marci mailed me a letter last week. It was in Joshua's fireproof lockbox—one of the things he chose to protect from everything that could destroy it. I didn't know it existed. He never told me he kept it.
Behind the Clouds
This morning, there was supposed to be a blood moon. It was raining. I stayed at the pier anyway. I always stay. There's a particular kind of faith required when you show up for something you were promised and the sky gives you nothing.
Standing in Uncertainty
I've been a planner my whole life. I carried an essay about my future from elementary school into my thirties, and every time God didn't deliver it on my timeline, I blamed the Strategist. This time, the storm is worse—and for the first time, I'm not angry at Him. Something is shifting. I'm learning to stand in the fog.
Writer's Growth 