Stomping the Grounds
But in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see.
-C.S. Lewis
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Feeding Yourself When Life is Groundhog Day
“My life is Groundhog Day. Every day is exactly the same.” Her baby crawled around her feet as her toddler played close by. I remember those days when all my children were young, and it felt like all I could report about each day was feeding my children and changing their diapers. Nap time and…
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Lois Lenski’s Little Books
Toddlers may be the funniest people you’ll ever meet. They know exactly what they want and have no idea what they want. They take everything seriously, and they take nothing seriously. They can go from laughing uncontrollably to crying uncontrollably and back to laughing in an instant. Everything in this world is still new to…
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The Life of Chesterton: A Review
Perhaps one of the most quotable writers of all time, Gilbert Keith Chesterton’s size and body of work are hard to match. His work included about 4,000 essays, 200 short stories, hundreds of poems, eighty books, and five plays. He engaged with many of the intellectuals of his day and continues to shape the readers’…
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Finding My Way Back To Neverland
Sometimes the situation at my front door is quite stress-inducing. It’s not just the shoes, though the quantity of shoes is quite overwhelming. It’s more the giant chunks of dried mud and the leaves that fall off the shoes that get me. Now, the shoes— all twenty-seven and one-half pairs of them—aren’t the real culprit…
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Coming of Age
I couldn’t make it stop. Even though I had been in bed for two hours, my mind wouldn’t stop running through the possible interview questions and how best to answer them. I had spent two months prepping for the next day, thinking, getting feedback from people, running through questions and answers. Now, sleep evaded me…
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The Work of a Boy
With my two boys at 18 years old and 18 months, I’m in the curious position of raising boys 17 years apart. My house holds both the beginning and the end of childhood, and it’s a glorious thing. As one boyhood is just beginning to blossom, and we wonder who he will become, the other…
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Calico and the Christmas Conversion
Cactus County might be the last place you expect to find a beautiful Christmas story. There’s nothing wrong with Cactus County. In fact, everyone there is happy and content. There are no locks and no jails and no fences, for it’s that safe. But it’s missing the hustle and bustle of New York in December…
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A Warning About Having Children
The surgeon general recently issued a new public health advisory. Forget pandemics or toxic substances; this time the source of this warning is likely sleeping under the same roof as you. The culprit: your own kids. According to the surgeon general’s report, the mental toll of raising children is “an urgent public health issue.” As…
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Review: Everything Sad is Untrue
Joshua 4:21-24 And he said to the people of Israel, “When your children ask their fathers in times to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ then you shall let your children know, ‘Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.’ For the LORD your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until…
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A Place to Hang the Moon
Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. “Pooh!” he whispered. “Yes, Piglet?” “Nothing,” said Piglet, taking Pooh’s paw. “I just wanted to be sure of you.” From The House at Pooh Corner She pushes herself up onto my lap. I kiss the top of her head and ask her what she’s doing. “Nothing. Just…
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The Hard Stories of Katherine Paterson
When I wake up each morning, the first thing I see as my eyes start to clear is a giant calendar. It represents the first 18 years of my son’s life, and more days are crossed off than not. I rub my eyes and try to focus and remember that the calendar is not really…
