Home -

What We Throw Away

I’m embarrassed to write this post, but I’m going to anyway because I think it’s important. It’s about what we throw away. The weekend was warm and our boys wanted to go to a swimming pool. Scott and I were hard at work on the farm. “No pools are open yet,” I told the boys as I walked by pushing a wheelbarrow toward the garden I was planting. “Our pool leaks,” they said. Their pool cost $17 dollars at Walmart last season. “Sorry, you can help your dad and I work some more or you can play in the hose, […]

By Paula April 4, 2016

When You Live With Regret

I remember it so clearly, that day I regret. I was seven years old sitting in a lawn chair surrounded by the poor Hispanic family from down the road. The Mendozas didn’t have much, but they had each other, and were always together like a pack of puppies in our neighborhood. I don’t remember their folks ever being around. Perhaps their parents were away working night and day to feed eight kids in that single-wide trailer on a hill across the road. The Mendozas taught me how to make tortillas on the stove top without burning my fingers. Salt, tortillas, […]

By Paula March 29, 2016

When you really need an Easter calf

“You’re a country girl, not a city girl,” I told our daughter, Lacy, when she first left home. Her hair was long and brown, her eyes wide and blue as our country sky. At 19 years old, she hadn’t been kissed yet. “We’ll see,” Lacy said with a cheeky grin as she climbed into her little Honda Accord and drove away. I stood in the driveway with tears streaming down my face and watched until her car disappeared down our back country road, until her dust disappeared across our blue country sky. Our blue-eyed girl was gone for several years. […]

By Paula March 21, 2016

When time is hard on a marriage

When you walk down the aisle when you’re young, you don’t look down the river of your life, and think one day I will be too tired and too busy for this marriage. You don’t see the bills and the kids and the responsibilities that will shape you as a couple. When you’re young, you see your partner without the lines and wrinkles of time, and you have no idea the forces that will put those lines and wrinkles on your husband’s forty-year-old face. Time can be hard on a marriage. I didn’t start fighting time until about two decades […]

By Paula March 14, 2016

Pain Engraves A Deeper Memory

I have vivid memories of my mother-in-law because as the writer and poet, Anne Sexton, once said, “Pain engraves a deeper memory.” My mother-in-law is on hospice in a hospital in Virginia and I wish I could go to her. I’d like to say goodbye. The last time we talked my mother-in-law said, “You need to call me more often! I need you to take care of me!” Then she sobbed and wailed and I put my head in my hands and prayed for her as she cried. I told her I loved her, and that I would try to call […]

By Paula March 1, 2016

The Beauty of Confidence

Taken a number of years ago, this is my favorite picture of Luke playing soccer. Luke didn’t just play soccer, he planned soccer. You can see that on his face. He imagined himself making the big plays before he ever kicked the ball. Even as a tiny boy, Luke was full of confidence. Once he started to walk, he could outrun about anyone. As a toddler, Luke was that tyke standing on top of the highest monkey bars giving all the moms heart attacks at the park. And I was that mommy crawling up into the hamster tubes at McDonald’s […]

By Paula February 22, 2016

Loser Mom Moment

Last night I was about to post a new blog. Once a week I do my best to post. “Is it funny,” Scott asked me. “Nope, it’s a hard one.” “Don’t post it,” said Scott. “Write something funny.” “I don’t write funny. I’m not a funny person,” I told my husband. “Write about the boys. Someone will laugh,” Scott said. Instead I went to bed. I wasn’t in a funny mood. God’s mercies are new every morning because I woke up in a much better place. Recently, I had lunch with a precious new friend who follows my blog. “I […]

By Paula February 17, 2016