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you will not be bitter
Even when you see it coming, falling into a painful season of life is miserable. Muscles can’t grow unless they break. Flowers can’t grow without dirt. But despite how many black-and-white mugs we desperately grasp with sayings like this, filled with coffee in the morning and wine and whatever time it becomes acceptable, it doesn’t…
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pandemic motherhood: more leggings, more grace
This is for my fellow social media mamas: remember how we all argued a few years ago about how leggings may or may not be pants? For the record, I was on the side of “leggings are pants,” and I never left. They cover my legs, and they look like pants to me. Cue 2020, when…
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For Cooper: tomorrow is your due date
Tomorrow is your due date; I instinctively suspected we wouldn’t make it that far once we first got the news. It’s the date I recited before each weekly ultrasound, echoing with familiarity as I watched your fluid levels drop with each measurement. It’s the date I circled in my planner, back before we knew, which…
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always, things will be well.
In this waiting space, most of my thoughts don’t end with a conclusion. I have started so many hope-laced fragments that have lacked an ending, but not direction. Each night as I settle in, I find myself so far from where I start. Some days, nothing can kill my hope, and others, I fall asleep…
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waiting for Cooper: our on-time God
About a week before Cooper was born, something caught my eye from my typical daytime TV lineup. I work from home, and so I keep the TV on for background noise while the girls are in daycare. As a mom, it’s hard for me to focus when a house is too quiet. As I worked,…
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it’s not you, it’s me: living in a high-risk pregnancy
To the well-meaning stranger who asks when my baby is due: there is a reason I avert my eyes. I instinctively touch the head of my 2-year-old as you ask the age gap. You remark how full my hands will be, and I hope you are right; full hands is the goal. But just in…
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i am not brave
I am not brave, not by myself. I didn’t choose this. I do this because I have to. There is so much I don’t know, but I do know that everything always works for good. His good is not in earthly terms. I know impossible things happen. I also know impossible good doesn’t always…
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when words fail
It is June, somehow. I feel like I am poking my head out of a warped cavity of time, realizing what has passed by. Enough emotions to fill years, since Easter of 2019, my world has been shifting sharply. A surprise pregnancy in February left me open and vulnerable in a way I had not…
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the irony of the fun run
Have you ever found yourself recognizing the absurdity of a situation in real-time? It’s like when you wish someone in the elevator a “Happy Monday!”, but even more specific than that. This may or may not be a purely hypothetical illustration. Let’s say you are 36 weeks pregnant, it’s a hot July morning, and you…
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my western nest 