Columns

On Saturday, Mel carried our Christmas tree box upstairs. We paid $75 for our 6 foot fresh Douglas fir, perfect size for our small living room. (My husband calls it the “front” room.) “Have we ever paid that price for a tree, even when we chopped them down with the...

Watching for signs from my loved ones that passed is something I do on a daily basis. It is where I find hope and strength to believe they are just on the other side waiting for when it is my time to join them. If you’ve read my columns several years ago you would...

Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than receive. Acts 20:35 I walked out my door for lunch with a dear friend empty handed. Not even a dozen of our girls’ fresh eggs, a garlic bulb, or jar of strawberry jam. Melanie would’ve...

Keeping your focus on the things you are grateful for can be a daunting task if your life isn’t exactly what you want it to be. I’m not a list person but it is helpful sometimes to write down the things in your life for which you are thankful. We all know there is...

Now, y’all stay out of my fruit cellar,” Granny warned my sisters and me each summer vacation. She needn’t worry. We would never turn the doorknob to that dark, spooky place with a small window facing the alley side of the house. Once, when she opened the door to...

“Time waits for no one.” That’s one of my favorite sayings because it’s a truth that is hard to swallow. One day our physical self will be no more in this world. We can either wallow in the sadness of that truth or we can celebrate every day we are among the living....

No one cooked and baked from scratch like my mother-except Granny, who assigned her first child to the wood stove when she was eleven. There, Mom mastered biscuits, cornbread, pies, roasts, gravies, stringed beans in pork fat, fried chicken and pork chops, and oxtail...

A couple of months ago, I finally broke down and hired a Vietnamese tutor. This had come after nearly two-and-a-half years of trying to self-study the language, with some success. In that time I was able to cinch much of the alphabet and pronunciation, which, to say...

Pseudobulbar Affect is a thing. A real thing. A fascinating fictional example of it is found in Joaquin Phoenix’s blissfully uncomfortable portrayal of Batman’s arch-nemesis, Joker, in the October 2019 movie by the same name. Director Todd Phillips briefly captured...

I’m not sure, but I think I’ve lost the ‘Mother of the Year’ award again this year. I said that this weekend as a lot of us parents sat on the sidelines watching our daughters play in a soccer tournament. We all laughed and some agreed they felt the same. My thoughts...