Category: Unity in Diversity
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~Life is Not a Fairytale
Dear Lacey, Between your busy social calendar, rigorous gymnastics training schedule, drill team practices, and keeping up in school, it’s common for you to be very hungry and very tired by the end of every day. After Thursday practice you mysteriously turned down Cane’s Chicken Fingers, insistent you needed to get home and finish schoolwork.…
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Storm is Coming
Dear Hallie, I love books! And there is nothing quite like sharing good books with the people I love, especially my children! I still have a basket full of our favorite board books (including Snuggle Puppy and Pajama Time) waiting to be read to my grandchildren. No hurries, please! As my babies got a little…
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The Relativity of Success
Dear Cade, Two decades ago, when you first entered the world, I wasn’t much older than you are now. I was young, naïve, and full of hopes, dreams, and expectations of the kind of man you’d become one day! Slowly but surely, you’ve blow every one of those hopes, dreams, and expectations to bits! When…
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Mothers and Daughters
Dear Kori Jane, Being the mother of a published author fills me with immense pride and maybe just a tiny bit of fear of the stories you’ll tell about our crazy family! A few weeks ago, your little sister came home concerned about my reputation after being asked by a friend if your poems were…
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More to the Story
Dear Hallie, I can’t believe we’ve managed to keep you alive for 16 years. I believed I was a great mom until you were born, realizing I just had two somewhat predictable children before you – your older sister eager to impress and your older brother eager for peace. You were born the unpredictable third…
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Seasons Always Change
Dear Lacey, After entertaining the idea of moving last year, Dad and I decided to settle in and get you and your sister graduated before leaving our beloved home of 15 years. Then the first week of March, just after my sycamore tree finally sprang back to life, a house came on the market tempting…
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The Things that Matter Most
Dear Cade, You challenge me! You challenge me in ways all 16-year-olds challenge their mothers, but it’s so much more than that! You also challenge me in ways only an absent-minded professor challenges and confounds everyone they meet. While you miss obvious and practical realities staring you in the face, you’re more awake to the…
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Dinner Table Conversations
Dear Lacey, I’m constantly wavering between guilt and thankfulness as I watch you grow up in the chaos and shadow of your three older siblings. One guilt, for example, is there are significantly fewer evenings all of us happen to be home and ready to eat at the same hour. And even fewer evenings I…
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Sports, Space, Racecars, and Excavators
Dear Cade, Daddy and I both, for different reasons, hoped that our first child would be a boy. I’d always dreamed of an older brother, so I thought it would be ideal for my oldest to be male, but for your sports loving Daddy he dreamed of shooting hoops and playing catch with his son…
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Junior Year
Dear Kori Jane, You are 16. A high school junior. In fact, you’ve just started the second semester of your junior year. We were warned junior year would be brutal, and right about now you’d be ready to throw in the towel. You are no doubt just as sleep deprived, over committed, under nourished, and…