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  • Priceless

      It was 7:30 on a Friday night and my hand hovered above the return key of the laptop on my kitchen table. On the screen, the details of the unlikely purchase I was about to make, more money than I had ever spent with the exception of cars and house, more money than I…

  • Communion

    As a music minister at a First Communion Mass, I have a front row seat for some real beauty and also some outright hilarity. I watch the facial expressions of the second-grade children as they receive the Eucharist for the first time, and it can be hard to keep my place in the music; they…

  • Spoiled

    When my son texted to ask me to bring his forgotten chromebook to school, I was immediately conflicted. I went through all of the arguments in my head that I always do when one of my kids forgets something at school, which is blessedly rare. But each time, I think to myself: let them handle…

  • Tapestry

    “Not everything is a metaphor, Mom…not everything has to mean something,” my sixteen year old daughter says sometimes when I look too deeply at some small thing. And, I get it. Mothers can be annoying, and our quirky habits can be fodder for teasing and the very best eulogies. My ability to find a metaphor…

  • Hero

    My son begs me to stop telling the stories of when I did everything wrong. When I speak from the catalog of my most embarrassing moments, he becomes physically uncomfortable, desperate to climb into a time machine and rescue me from myself. But there are lessons to be learned in all of that muck, lessons…

  • Free

    One early morning in a 1970s summer, I woke before my sisters and went for a bike ride. Bike rides were a many-a-day occurrence in our seventies’ summers, but we tended to ride in packs, to someone’s house to play, then to the corner store to buy grape hubba bubba gum, then home again. On…

  • Confirmation

    Note: I read this letter and played these clips for my Confirmation students tonight.  It’s a good reminder of how big our lives actually are, so I’m sharing it with you, too. Dear You, The Narnia series of books was written by C.S. Lewis in the 1950s as an allegory, or metaphor, of the Christian…

  • Beautiful

    Beautiful. Amazing. Impressive. These are words my yoga teacher routinely used during our practice today. Part of me wanted to believe she was talking about me, though I probably didn’t deserve it. Part of me thinks she uses these words routinely because she is an inherently encouraging person. Regardless, whenever she says something positive, I…

  • Mother

    I cannot sleep until my children are home. These days as a mother of teenagers, it makes for some late nights on the couch, phone in my hand, until I hear the car pull in, the door click open. Their father is able to sleep soundly without one speck of worry in their absence, and…

  • Bailey

    One year ago, we brought our dog home from a rescue shelter in New Hampshire. It was a long journey for her, from Arkansas to New Hampshire to here, and she had at least three different names along the way. It was a long journey for us as well. For many years, I was the…