making space for creativity
Spring in Wisconsin is shy. She peaks out for a moment, almost sixty and sunny, then she ducks back, below freezing and blankets us in a light snow. This past month has felt like that, moments of rest and beauty that allow us to catch glimpses of the vision for why we moved, then…
One of the surprises of the last month has been answering people’s polite, “and what do you do” questions. And the answer has changed, just like my official address, from, “well, I nanny, and tutor, and blog, and I’m working on a children’s novel” to simply, “I’m a writer.” Sometimes, if I’m…
Tea, like Lent, was something that I knew about before college, but was brewed a bit weak, and I was a little unimpressed. High school, around the year 2000, introduced me to fancy coffee drinks and youth group Christian subculture—often together, as my high school youth group met in my church’s coffee shop. I…
It is Lent. I want coffee. It is winter. I want spring. It is unsettled. I want routine. But here we are, at the tail-end of winter, at the very beginning of Lent, a week and half into the adventure of Wisconsin. There is sometime so very physical and embodied about Lent…
It is the last days of our intact apartment. Kind friends keep asking how the packing is going for our upcoming move in 15 days, and I smile and say we haven’t packed a thing. My husband, Evan sometimes will add that we’ve steadily over the years tried to get rid of things we…
There are big changes afoot in our household: we’re moving to Wisconsin! At the end of February, a mere 3 1/2 weeks away, Evan and I are packing up our Maryland apartment and heading 750 miles west. We are excited and sad, peaceful and nervous. We know it’s a good and right decision to…
Originally, I didn’t think that I needed to post about investing money in walking, because walking is cheap: go outside in some comfortable shoes and clothes, and walk. But now that the polar vortex is dipping down again, and Maryland is acting like Wisconsin, the clothing necessary to be “comfortable” when it’s 10 degrees…
reason one :: walking & stories For as long as I can remember, I have loved to walk and think of stories. It seemed so natural to me, that I was surprised to discover early on in marriage, that Evan did not do the same thing. He, if left with open time on a walk…
Self-care. It’s kind of an amorphous, trendy category, but one that people (at least on the internet) generally agree is important. Google says there are more than 655 million hits for the term “self-care,” and 40 million blog postings related to the term. Plus there’s a wikipedia article on it. So, it must be…
I love the trend among bloggers to pick a word for their year. The words are often thoughtful and inspiring: Risk. Go. Grow. Slow. Balance. Nourish. My birthday is two days after Christmas, so I have always used blowing out my candles to reflect on my hopes for the upcoming year. Meaning that from…
This weekend we drove home through the Blue Ridge mountains covered in melting snow. The sun set behind us, and a full moon rose in the rosy evening glow. It was quiet in the car. It was a weekend full of beauty and sadness. We met a new precious baby but also mourned…
The snow has been falling thick and fast in Maryland these past few days. The morning after the Christmas ball, Evan and I left for a hike with just a few flurries, and when we got back five inches had fallen. The woods were deserted except for a few birds and three bounding deer, and…
Seven years ago, when I should have been studying for finals, I took out a sharpie marker and wrote down a quote from Lauren Winner’s book, Girl Meets God. I was engaged, and my betrothed was a thousand miles away. Winner’s writings on Advent spoke to me in that cold Illinois dorm room: …
Prayer is simultaneously a very personal and very communal event. It is just you and God talking; at the same time it is part of a great and ancient conversation of the Church Universal. Throughout the Fall we’ve talked about 9 great paper prayer books (part 1 and 2), definitions of reasons to and examples…
For years, I resisted reading Twilight. It wasn’t that I thought I wouldn’t like it. I was afraid I would like it too much. I had heard that they were poorly written, misogynistic, and spiritually dark. And what would it say about me—a writer, a feminist, a Christian—if I liked Twilight? Twilight hit upon some…