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No More Peach Tree
No more peach tree. It was infested all up the trunks (there were multiple trunks due to poor pruning and management) with peach scale bugs that would have been difficult to treat, and after 8 years of losing crops to fungal diseases, we decided to call it quits. I shed some tears as this was a symbolic tree, the one we bought after a second miscarriage. In truth, we can’t just burry our grief in the ground and expect it to grow something beautiful. We must tend to it with a watchful eye and sometimes sharp shears to manage its growth and changes in different seasons. Sometimes a lot of…
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Thoughts
My husband has no recollection of ever having sobbed in his life, so yesterday evening when I was trying to explain how my bouts of depression felt, there was a clear disconnect in my ability to communicate. “Have you ever cried really hard? Like where your whole body is heaving?” “No.” “Okay, well…. that’s how it felt.” It was maybe Friday when my body and my spirit felt as if I’d just spent hours doubled over crying, only I hadn’t been. There was nothing to be sad about in that moment, but I felt emotionally drained and broken. Of course it passed. New days bring new feelings, new weather, new…
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Christmas Heavy
Around Christmas every year, I feel heaviness — not from Thanksgiving feasting — but an emotional heaviness. I’d like to explain it away by the change in weather or that the seasonal glitz and magic of the holidays have dulled as the years wear on, but I can’t ever shake that there is a shadow over my heart. It’s been a heavier year than ever. There have been enormous losses and beautiful gifts of new life, and the collision of the the two feels a little like that time Joe and I went sailing and ran into a bridge we failed to see before we could get the mast down…
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Chocolate Milk and Anger
I was upstairs scrubbing my jawline with acne cleanser (thank you, mid-30s hormones and anxiety for bad skin), and I’m listening to the boys making their chocolate milk. They’ve learned to dump instant breakfast packets in a glass, pour the milk and stir. It’s their favorite drink (favorite breakfast as well) and it was a big deal that the youngest earned permission to make his own. They do it on their own most mornings. I overheard angry accusations that the oldest used up the last of the milk. I had bought two new gallons the day before, but it’s hard for the youngest to take the seal off and pour…
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Journey of Love
It may have been senior year of college, the timing seems right, when I was walking down one of the sidewalks of main campus, probably around Riddick or Mann Halls and the words, “You care more about knowing my will than you care about knowing Me,” were heavy on my heart. I won’t go so far as to claim I heard the voice of God, but this conviction was crystal clear. I had been mulling over which path to take — law school, a counseling program, missions work, creative writing school, or stay in engineering. I wanted direction. I wanted to know what to do with my life, and based…
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Am I doing this right?
When I was a brand new mama, I spent the first six months seeking answers from google, online forums and a friend who was a couple months ahead of me and had read far more parenting books than myself. I struggled to have confidence in the job I was doing. The strength of opinions coming at me from all sides undermined what little confidence I had in my abilities to be a good mom. Other than other panicked mothers on baby forums posting pictures of odd rashes and five-minute play by plays of their baby’s fevers, I came across very few parents who would, in a place of vulnerability, offer…
