Four years ago, I woke up on a brisk November day to presidential election results that felt staggering. Donald Trump had won, and he would be our new president. To almost all of my local friends and neighbors, this was cause for celebration. Northwest Georgia was unabashedly on the Trump Train, leaving me feeling very […]
Why I Pray
A few nights ago, we took our kids to their new favorite park in one of the nicer areas of Charleston. The homes are big and immaculate; the park is expansive with gorgeous trees; and the neighborhood kids appear to have free rein to walk, ride bikes, and drive golf carts in the busy streets […]
The September 12th Generation
In 2001, I was 20 years old. In another year, I will be 40 . . . and September 11, 2001 will be the hanger across which my life drapes in equal distribution. I’ve thought about that a great deal these past few days: about what it means to have lived a lifetime almost equal […]
On Losing My Computer Files (and Other Good News)
The other day, I decided to do some computer maintenance. To make a long story really short, I started pressing buttons, blowing past warnings about my actions being “irreversible,” and – voila! – accidentally wiped everything from my desktop. When it happened, I tried not to panic. I have a long and storied history of […]
A Gratitude Exercise: Finding Joy in Your Journey
Most of us have taken hard paths that we later regret . . .mainly because they were so hard! It’s easy to look back and imagine an alternative that would have been obstacle-free, but that is neither realistic nor helpful. As Gandalf observed in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit: “There are no safe paths in this part of the […]
Breaking Up With Normal
Like almost every mom of school-aged children in America, I spent much of July tossing and turning at night about education alternatives for my children this fall. Throughout my painful decision-making process, one constant refrain kept escaping my lips: I just want things to go back to normal! I wanted normal friendships, normal school, normal work […]