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I’m Done Playing Church

I know the moment it happened. It came with a series of losses. I was standing on our front porch at sunrise, before sunrise really when it remained dark outside, when dawn was still black and blue like a bruise before the light breaks through. It was the day after Anna died and I was reeling. I had prayed, “Please God, heal Anna’s concussion and keep her safe during soccer season,” this while holding onto Anna’s dad in our kitchen. He’d gotten a phone call that she’d been hurt in a game. Standing there in my apron a year ago […]

By Paula February 16, 2016

When You Really Need Grace

We may have an early bloom this year. The almonds are starting to pop. Spring has sprung, but this may not be good. If our orchard blooms early, the chance of a frost ruining our harvest rises. February is always unpredictable. Farmers hope for the later bloom. Early blooms cause us angst. Early blooming children are the same way. Children who are precocious and have to learn the hard way. If I could sum up our oldest son this would be it: he has learned the hard way. In the seventh grade our son noticed girls. At 16, he wrecked […]

By Paula February 7, 2016

When A Sunrise Surprises You

I usually rise early. Before dawn. Before the rooster crows. Before my eyes are really open. Most days I don’t even think about the sunrise because I’m making school lunches, finding the boys’ backpacks, starting the laundry, and shoving toast in the toaster. But once in awhile a sunrise surprises me. Usually on a day when I really need to see beauty. I never really understood this need for beauty until life got hard. Sure, I liked beautiful things, but I didn’t savor beauty, didn’t thirst for beauty like a man in the wilderness thirsts for water. Pure, clean, living water. […]

By Paula January 29, 2016

Farming Grace

Life has not worked out as I planned. I’d hoped by now to have my memoir: Farming Grace, ready for you to read having gone the traditional route of publishing. Last January, I signed with a literary agent, and then life hit hard. 2015 was a year of just surviving. That little deal I’d made with my husband didn’t even cross my mind until summer, around the time I realized we needed to get moving with my memoir. So I drove north for a day, with three boxes of peaches, and met with my literary agent. Like me, she was knee deep […]

By Paula January 23, 2016

A little dirt never hurt anyone but the mommy

I came home to find the boys covered in mud today. This is what happens when it rains in California on Martin Luther King Day and the daddy is left in charge. This… A mud slide. And this is how I feel when I see mud mixed with my boys. This… Because it will be the mommy washing these clothes. And scrubbing little boys in the tub. And scrubbing out the tub. But really, I don’t see red anymore when I see mud. I just can’t be mad. I’ve tried, and I can’t. Because life’s too short not to play in […]

By Paula January 18, 2016

Should you make your kids work?

Our oldest daughter learned to drive a tractor on her 14th birthday. Our whole family was out working in the field when Opa decided Cami would serve us best on the John Deere. Opa and Scott needed to do some heavy lifting on the ground, clearing old almond trees off our property, and someone had to run the tractor. I had a baby in my arms. Oma was piling brush with the younger kids. So Cami was it. And she wasn’t happy about working that day. If I remember correctly, I think Cami said something like, “My friends don’t have […]

By Paula January 11, 2016

What I learned in 2015…Forgive fast, dance slow, and love hard.

Love hard because we don’t get to love forever. We don’t get to forgive forever. And we certainly don’t get to dance slow forever. And by the way, dancing slow lasts a lot longer than dancing fast. In October, Scott and I went to a fabulous wedding where everyone was dancing fast. We survived on the dance floor for half a dance. I’m not kidding. “I’m too old for this,” I told Scott over the pounding music. “Me too,” he said there on the dance floor, and we wished the adorable bride and groom well there on the dance floor, […]

By Paula January 3, 2016