My 13-year-old has been obsessed with weather since the day she was wobbly legged, teetering from one foot to the other in a toddler rain dance. She could tell me about the towering cumulonimbus with its anvil head and tornado spawning downdrafts by the time she was 5. I remember the hours I spent with her in “exposure therapy,” walking her outside under the porch roof in the middle of a thunderstorm, asking her to rate her fear on a scale of 1-10, then making her stay in the middle of her terror until the 10 backed down to 9, then 8, then 7 before heading back inside. The face-your-fear style of therapy mitigated her storm-related anxieties, but the intrigue of a good storm has continued to captivate her as she’s grown. Continue reading “Regarding the Clouds”
Letting Go of Home
Untethered, my life drifts loose, away from a familiar horizon. Since saying yes to names on a piece of paper, names listed in print under the letters B-u-y-e-r, our family home has hung suspended in a legal state called “under contract.” It’s still ours, but new names are beginning the process of calling it. Inside it still, we are disconnected and restless. The ropes that bound have given way, and we begin the gradual drift away. Continue reading “Letting Go of Home”
Motherhood: The Gift You Unwrap
Mother’s Day No. 13 is now part of my calendar archives. As I reflect on the gifts I was given by my children this year, I can’t help but make the association between the literal and the proverbial gifts we moms receive every day. Children are a blessing, and motherhood is hard. Terrifying and delightful at once, it is a gift you unwrap daily without knowing what you’ll get. My kids now span the ages of 5 to 13, and every day I face a gamut of emotions from relaxed and confident to humble and downright scared. As my kids grow older, I am increasingly aware of the fact that the “easy stuff” is behind us. Continue reading “Motherhood: The Gift You Unwrap”
Spring In the Mix
The window frames a spring sky, its blue background set behind the delicious green of new leaf, a green so bright that it seems as though the sun is dancing atop every shoot, setting each aglow. A light, warm breeze plays at the open window. The songs of birds make a four-dimensional show of daylight. With spring well established and everything lush and glowing, it’s hard not to feel a sense of hopeful contentment. But as I write, a soul full with spring and the quiet of a morning with kids out of the house, my desktop displays the morning emails and Facebook posts. One is a journal chronicling the story of a 13-year-old boy who has traveled to Shands Hospital in Gainesville, Florida for cancer treatment. My husband and I used to work with the boy’s dad, and the news of this cancer was a shock (isn’t it always when it’s more than a name but someone you know?). A Facebook status by my old college roommate provides an update on her struggle with lupus that has proven “treatment resistant” and kept her on a steady course of steroids, chemotherapy and gammaglobulin injections. Another friend has flown to Texas for a stem cell transplant in the hopes of curing his leukemia. Another college roommate of mine has been posting updates on Facebook about her 4-year-old niece who is undergoing treatment for cancer. And amidst the chirping of birds, I am struck with the juxtaposition of children with cancer and spring leafing through my open windows, a juxtaposition that gives me considerable pause. Continue reading “Spring In the Mix”
Grace V. Karma
Worth the 2-minute read: An Interview with Bono.
Holding onto Home
This is the house of my childhood. We moved every five years, but this was the house because it was the last place we lived together as a family. The year we moved away from it, my brother left home for college. And every place subsequent wasn’t quite the same. Our family was never quite the same either, and as my brothers each left home for school and visited later with wives, I came to know that something had been lost to us forever there in that house. Continue reading “Holding onto Home”
MLK on the Purpose of Christ’s Church
New York World-Telegram and The Sun (staff photographer). Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
“In the final analysis the church has a purpose,” said the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and then went on to share from Isaiah 61:1-2 before the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. It was June 5, 1966. The sermon he gave, titled “Guidelines for a Constructive Church,” is a beautiful call to Christ’s church to remember its purpose and call in this world. If you have time on this holiday, I hope you’ll take time to submit yourself to the message of Dr. King. May we be the church God has set us apart to be.
10 Reasons Why I Haven’t Blogged
Okay so my friend lovingly left me this message last night: “You know that blog of yours is not going to write itself.” And I know it’s not, and I know I need to post again. But my brain is registering one long dial tone. So I’ve decided to give all one or two of you ten reasons why I haven’t blogged over the holidays and the few weeks that followed (then you’ll believe me when I say “dial tone”): Continue reading “10 Reasons Why I Haven’t Blogged”
Between the Inhale and Exhale
The silence around me is precious, and I feel as though I’ve stolen it. Writing is a chore when I am distant from the rhythm of my own breathing, when the motions of my day are frenetic and I fail to notice I’m breathing or that breathing is gift or that I am just a breath. Drawing near means slowing down. Urgent nips heels like a dog at sheep. Slowing is chore when I make my home in task, when breath is taken in gasps and sighs. Yet without breath, life ebbs. Continue reading “Between the Inhale and Exhale”
Winterizing, Christ Bearing & Spiritual Discipline
A house built for Florida makes my feet cold on the morning our city breaks its low-temperature record. It’s not that it hasn’t been colder than 21 degrees Fahrenheit here before, but it’s not been that cold on the 8th of December. I don’t remember having this much trouble warming up, not when I spent hours playing in snow as a kid in the northeast and not in the ‘burbs of Chicago when I would walk the 13 blocks back to the college dorm in minus-zero wind chills after finishing the night shift. But then in both of those cases, my life involved a whole lot more physical activity, and I came home to rooms outfitted with storm windows and steam heat from oil burning boilers. Generally speaking, homes were winterized. But this is Florida, and I live in a house built in 1939. If there’s such a thing in the insulation industry as a negative “R” value, I think this house has one. It just wasn’t designed for winter. Continue reading “Winterizing, Christ Bearing & Spiritual Discipline”