love stories
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Because You Can’t Walk Beside Them Anymore
While you’re out shopping for dorm room supplies, there’s something else nagging you behind the anticipation of their new adventure. Yes, you’re full of excitement and joy for their new adventure, but you’re fearful of the heavy isolation of the world might find them first. You remember every prayer you’ve whispered over them since they were small, and all you can do now is hope that it was enough. But here’s the thing you can’t and shouldn’t let go of: One in three, they say, that 1 in 3 young adults inevitably face frequent, high levels of loneliness. So yeah, despite the new adventure that awaits them, despite all the…
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I Broke All The Rules on Mother’s Day Gifts
The etiquette rule book says gifts for women should not come with a cord and should not require any effort on her part. But I showed up every Mother’s Day weekend at the garden center, walking through rows of vibrant colors and possibilities, picking out petunias and geraniums and trailing ivy, imagining the basket we’d build together in her backyard. I was not going to give my mom a gift that could be wrapped in tissue paper, dropped on the table, and left for days. I gave her something that required us both to get our hands deep in potting soil, smelling the earth, smelling the flowers, getting dirt under…
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Your pain is not a detour — it’s a path.
Not a single bone in our entire being wants to forgive. When we’ve been wronged, we carry an almost primal need to feel justified; our instincts tell us that we’re right to hold on tight to our hurt. We want the world to know that we’ve been wronged and build a defense around us so that it can never happen again. Along with this hardness comes a layer of guilt and shame, because we know that God is seated in a higher plane, calling us to simply forgive (but not forget) and go in peace. So we try to ask for strength so that we can forgive. The power we…
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Mining The Best Memories
There’s a time and place for Stephen King, no doubt… but in a world full of incessant darkness, this is not the time. Her world is already dark; she is blind. The nursing home does provide her with audiobooks, which she listens to regularly. “What are you listening to?” I asked. “Stephen King,” she replied. After finding the activities director, and sitting down together, we selected some new alternative authors to add to her listening portfolio — she perked up when I mentioned Joyce Meyer, and when I told her about Jan Karon’s books, similar to the small town we grew up in. She said she would like that. As…
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Then, I Would Have Finally Had My Daughter
When Rosie was in the hospital, she needed two blood transfusions to stop the blood from filling up in her lungs, from the rat poison she ingested. The animal hospital had plenty of blood, that was not an issue. But, if the doggie blood bank was low, we learned later, that humans can donate their own blood, and a portion of human protein can be donated to the dog. So, if she had needed blood, I know of four boys, and a mom and dad who would have gladly rolled their sleeves. And if we had, Rosie would definitely be our “blood relative,” and I would finally have the daughter…
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I Knew So Much When I Was 40
But, now, I’m my 50s, I am much humbler. I am in awe at how vast and wonderful the world is, and how there is not just one or even three ways to do something — but one million. This is a vast and wonderful world, and I have just learned to be a bit more open and sit with things for a while. I hope I can keep this same open attitude if and when I ever become a mother-in-law or a grandmother. Just to let them make their own way, and to assume that they know what is best for them — rather than become a meddlesome, tiresome…
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The Visit
Before I reached down to touch her, I said her name, so that she wouldn’t be frightened. As soon as she heard the first sounds of my voice, she looked toward me with eyes that could not see me and pulled me into her. Tears flowed as I held her. Sorrow over all that has gone wrong, the joy, and the deep, buried sadness that all the memories we have built together over these years are surely coming to an end. Sorrow, tempered with the joy that we are right now graced with this moment; a free pass for today. Stripped of so much, she has no barriers left, so…
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The Lucky Ones
This beautiful onion was left in the lake house all winter long, from some time last fall. Trapped in the dark cold, it managed to create life for three new onions that are drawing nutrients from its mother. So many things to be grateful for in that tiny moment- thank God there is no mold or rancid smell. The entire plant is a perfect specimen of health. Gardening always mirrors life. I came late and the meeting had already started, but I snuck in the kitchen to have a chat with the one person I had been meeting to talk to all day. Our eyes met as if we were…
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Transcendence Leaves Us With Just Enough
If you had told me 40 some years ago, when I was sitting in my cousin’s bedroom listening to the 45 of American Pie, that one night, I would drive home from a track meet with my son and his friends, who would turn on their music, and it would be American Pie — I doubt I would have believed you. But, so it was. The entire night pummeled me with a thick coat of nostalgia with every turn of my head. First, it was the crooked country roads that ribboned the car all the way to the school house, nestled in the hills, surrounded by trees. Much like the…
