I noticed something about the couple sitting down the row from us in church last week. He kept whispering little things in her ear and she kept smiling. Their interaction was subtle, not distracting, but very sweet. Though she didn’t laugh out loud, it was clear that...
Dear 17-year-old Me,Let’s talk about your Dad. If you listed out your relationships by order of priority, I’m confident your dad wouldn’t land in the place he deserves—which is somewhere at the top of the list. When you have a dad like yours—one who faithfully...
Ken and I stopped to get a sandwich the other day, and were waiting in line to order when I noticed a man with his daughter. The girl looked to be about 14 or 15, and had just returned to her dad’s table after filling her drink.The man smiled kindly and said,...
My middle schooler told me yesterday that he took a nap on the bus en route to his track meet.I said, “A nap? Wasn’t it kind of noisy to take a nap?” I was remembering what my bus was like in middle school–with rowdy kids calling out to each...
Once, when my son Cole was three, I talked to him about stranger-danger. I told him that there are strangers who drive through neighborhoods like ours, looking for little boys to steal. I said that even if someone offered him candy, he must always stay away from...
ddiSpoiler alert: You might want to read part 1 and part 2 before you read on… I was a bit like Cinderella before the ball, humming little songs and dancing dreamily about my kitchen–the same kitchen that would soon be expanding by the magic wand of extra...
Five or six years ago, I began complaining about our kitchen to my husband. I said that it was too small. You could only fit a tiny round table in the eating area, and there wasn’t nearly enough room if we wanted to have a big group of people over for dinner....
“You’re not going to be happy,” I heard my husband say into the cell phone.He was at home, checking whether our dryer had a three or four prong cord. I was at Best Buy, trying to buy the correct replacement. But it turns out we have no electric cord...
One Sunday afternoon, I was shuffling through the stack of papers that had accumulated on my kitchen counter.One paper–obviously a letter–caught my eye. I glanced to see who it was from, but the ink at the bottom of the page had faded into oblivion. This...
On Sunday afternoon in a shallow area of Lake Michigan, I called my family in for a huddle. I challenged them all to a contest. For the next day and a half–the last moments of our summer vacation–we would only speak positive words. Any negatively spoken...