This essay was originally published in 2017. Listen to me read it aloud here. At breakfast this morning, my husband reminded me that today is Mardi Gras. He walked to the kitchen to make a second French press of coffee, and I got distracted by the sun coming through the back window and hitting me in the face. “You know,” I said, “I’m really sick of this house.” He came back to the table and replied, “Yes, I know.” I had mentioned this to him last week. The kids were off school for …
Christian faith
On Hope
It’s a sunny Sunday afternoon, and I’m home alone for the first time in two weeks, quietly reading Amy Peterson’s Where Goodness Still Grows. I’m right near the end, in the chapter about hope, where she writes about her ongoing, winter-related depression and how purchasing a handful of chicks brightened her. It had been a dream of hers to raise chickens and it’s been a dream of mine too, which might be a cliché but I’m okay with it. On a whim the other day, I looked up local real estate, …
Lent and Imperfection
Lent creeps up on me every year. The other day, I walked into the grocery store and saw a sign for a sale on shrimp. Just in time for Mardi Gras, the sign read. ‘Huh,’ I thought. Then I checked the date and realized that, yes, it must be about that time. I can never remember anymore, not since we moved back north away from Mobile, Alabama, where Mardi Gras originated and where you can barely get through the streets of downtown in February because of all the parades. It was easy to remember back …