Sugar and Spice

I started this blog on Tuesday but ran out of time to finish it (or so I thought). Seems like the ending was not written yet and so I had to wait. Over the weekend, the girls found a butterfly (moth?) with a wounded wing. They came peeling into the kitchen looking for plastic ware they could poke holes in for a habitat. They gently placed the broken butterfly in the dish, gave it a flower (to eat?) and a paper towel soaked in water (to drink). I’m not sure about the flag, but knowing them I’m sure it was for add some pizazz. Little sister checked on her patient faithfully each day and even wrote notes to the neighbor-girl and put them in her mailbox with updates (“are [sic] butterfly is doing good;” “gave her some water to drink”).  On Tuesday morning, as I was leaving for work I did a check for myself and came to realization that our patient had died. I took the photo you see and immediately started having a deep, internal philosophical debate about whether to toss th

I am 17-days away from doing one of the craziest, grab-life-by-the-horns, may-be-having-a-midlife-crisis, I'll be 40 in two and a half months things I've ever done. I'm traveling all the way to the Southern California desert by myself to meet 7 other women whom I have never met and with whom I will be sharing a tent for two-nights while we take turns running through the day and night through the trails in the Los Coyotes Reservation. What was I thinking? (Reference back to the upcoming anniversary of my birth 4-decades ago). I'm terrified. My training has not been what I wanted. I've seriously considered dropping out. There is a very nice alternate who I am sure would be happy to take my place. I've got a list of reasons a mile long why I should NOT go and do this thing. The list does not even include the half-joking reasons some of my friends have offered (this second list includes, among other things, coyotes, mountain lions, and human trafficking rings

Mother's Day 2019 was perfectly boring. It was an overcast, eat too much after church, take a nap, and go to the library kind of afternoon and I could not have asked for anything more. Mother's Day always brings with it bittersweet memories of the two little loves that allow me to celebrate this occasion. As kids do, they are getting big. I did not get one Mother's Day gift that had a hand print on it. It was a tinge sad. Like Mother's Day, the nearing end of school also makes me wax nostalgic. How could they be so old? Am I doing all the things to make them healthy, successful and most of all happy? I have been reading and thinking a lot about Grace lately. In the context of mothering, I need a lot of it; yet, until lately I'm not sure I had a real understanding of it (or as much of an understanding as one can have of something like Grace). Anyone who really knows me knows that I am a doer, a pleaser, an achiever, and a ball of anxious worry hidden behind

The last parade had rolled. Bleary eyed we sat in the pew waiting for ashes and forgiveness. She sat next to me coloring in her own little world; a world where sin is sneaking a cookie before dinner. We listen to the Word: “Be not like the hypocrites…” thoughts of dinner and laundry interrupting the well worn verses. She whispers loudly in the way that only a child can “who are the hypocrites?” I shush her; in the way that only a mother can. She whispers even louder urgently even, “BUT WHO ARE THE HYPOCRITES” She is not just listening like the rest of us. She is hearing The Word of God. She needs to know who they are, so she can be sure she is not like them, Tears flood my eyes. My throat closes,  chest tight. I kiss the top of her head, but I cannot answer. I cannot even whisper it softly, because the answer is I am them, baby. All of us are. But not you, Not yet. Be not like them, my love. Keep listening.