There is a woman in the mirror that shares my face but does not know who I am. She mimics my every move with nuanced attention to detail–the slight raise of brow, the synchronized blink and focus, the parting lips and hint of smile… Her performance is flawless. But she does not know what I…
Tag: metaphor
When Every Choice Is Too Hard (Podcast #16)
“I am just trying to figure out my life, one day at a time. I am just trying to discern which direction to walk. I desperately want a clear path to follow. Someone to hand me a map and say, “Here. This is your life. You will maximize it if you take this road, turn…
One Small Garden: Tending the Life I Am Given
How do I keep finding myself here in the middle of the night? I should be sleeping. I tossed and turned an hour before surrendering to the river-rush of words that swept me up in its current and lifted my body out of bed and onto the quiet bank of the 3 a.m. kitchen table….
The Woman and the Seed, A Parable
This is a true story. It is the story of a woman who fell in love with a man. She married him with a certain picture of what life would be like in the back of her mind. It looked like a garden in springtime. Everything beautiful was in bloom. Every bird was singing. They…
Grief is a River
Grief is a river that now runs through my life. Sometimes it is slow and steady, passing gently over rocks of remembrance, pooling up in beautiful, idyllic scenes where the late afternoon sun brushes through the trees and paints the waters and the riverbank in bright splashes of quivering light. The aching beauty of having…
My Beautiful Dying Mother, A Birth Story
Mama had nine children. I am the youngest, and I have often felt a deep sense of gratitude that she surrendered her life to this process so many times. I see it as no small miracle that I even exist in the world. And that my seven children exist. Mama was always the first person…
Being There (On the Shores of Life and Loss)
A week ago we cried over the body of my beloved Mother. She is gone. This keeps hitting me like ocean waves, one after the other. How it swells. How it breaks. It all seems like a dream. The next day was of course a birthday. My daughter’s third. The only time to cry was…
Marking a Season
I miscarried nine days before our 15th anniversary. There we sat, across the table at a little cafe, drinking coffee together. Our six living children were home with a friend who gave us the day together to celebrate our marriage. The week before, Randy and I had privately laid the whisper of a body down…
The Daily Turn #21: Blank Wall
Inspiration is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Take the blank wall I am staring at right now. Someone might see it as a barrier to creative thought, something solid and immovable, a metaphor for writer’s block. Windowless, it sheds no light on the question asked (what words are gathering just underneath the tip…
The Daily Turn #15: Sunflower
of courseit could mean only this:we need to clean the guttersof our house. But we both felt–upon seeing thestraight, strong stalkof a sunflowerstretching upfrom the rootsdug deep intothe ditch-bank-edgeof our roof(two-stories high)–that it wasa blessing,a definite metaphorfor something better.