A Certain Kind of Friend

One month after our youngest son, Andrew, graduated from high school we did something drastic. Actually, a rather long list of drastic that included the following…

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Sidelined

My friend’s daughter came home from college for summer break. And stayed all of forty-eight hours. The siren call of options—boyfriend, multiple beach getaways with multiple friends, a mission trip—lured her away so quickly it was almost indecent. My friend was not hurt, nor was she angry. But she wasn’t happy either.

It’s just that this was not what she wanted.

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Careless Disregard

A week ago I read an article called My Virginity Mistake by Jessica Ciencin Henriquez. I was saddened by her description of the night she decided to wear a purity ring at an emotionally-charged youth rally, where the leaders worked several hundred kids up into a wholesome frenzy and where she drew a moral line in the sand of her young life. And lived to regret it.

Conversations about right and wrong make me break out in hives. Even so...

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So You Think You Can't Dance?

Today, I'm honored to be a guest once again over at StartMarriageRight. You may read the article there or join me right here...

Your Voice

Today's post is an old prayer-poem that I can now say God answered far better than I could have ever imagined in my wildest dreams.

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Microscope

We had this taxidermist friend, well, more of an acquaintance, really. Years ago Bill pastored a church that met in a crumbling old Gothic Revival building on Main Street in a small Pennsylvania town. The white Victorian next door to the church was too big to be someone’s private home—especially in our town—but too homey not to have someone living in it. A tasteful sign on the corner identified it as a funeral home, but the toys that littered the back yard identified it as a young family’s dwelling.

We were intrigued and even a little spooked by this arrangement. A nice guy, his lovely wife, and two pre-school children lived two stories above a basement room that regularly housed dead bodies. We were both from big cities where people didn’t live in the same buildi

ng as their businesses, especially if that business was a mortuary.

It was creepy, and yet they seemed so normal.

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What I'll Never Regret

Today, I'm in Ithaca, NY, with our good friends, Jon and Christine Butcher and their fabulous crew. Tonight I'll be speaking to Christine's MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group here... I'm so much better at writing words than saying them, so if I could tell moms anything at all it would be this...

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Sappy Love Poem

If you know me, you know all about our DIL's amazing business, The NotWedding. The NotWedding is a big fake wedding that is more informational than a traditional wedding trade show and way, way more fun. Callie and her crew of talented, inside-and-out-beautiful women hold these business goals: To promote local businesses, to inspire brides and to encourage solid and committed marriages. Cool, huh? One small piece of the lovely NW puzzle is their blog, so I twisted Callie's arm to let me post something (again... and I didn't really twist her arm - I'd never!)

It's a poem, sappily titled If We Were Flowers... and you can read it here.

Girl Meets Boy

By all rights I oughta be one conflicted woman.

Heavily influenced by my grandmother, Lula Grace Burton, who took me to tea rooms and taught me how to set a table and ma

de ginger bread palaces with me at Christmas. Raised by Mary Lu Smith, a bona fide artist who rebelled (just a little) against her mother’s domestic felicity and let me make fancy dinners while she preferred to cut the grass. (To this day she’ll tell you she hates to cook, but I think she’s lying. You can’t be that good at something you hate.) I was taught that women were so much more than “all that” at Agnes Scott College, where marriage and family were not worthy enough goals for a woman of letters. Bill Murray showed up to challenge that line of reasoning. And I rejoice that he did.

I tell you, the ghost of my grandmother lived in our house. But so did four boys and one man… and me.

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Truth Compost Pile

A church not far from us has this on its marquis: "With you I am well-pleased." I can't help but wonder what a serial killer might find to do with that out-of-context statement.

God loves us,

even the serial killers among us, but surely he is not pleased with us no matter what we do? Surely God's pleasure is more complex than any blanket statement can make it.

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Joy Ride

Today, I'm honored to introduce my favorite guest blogger and all-around awesome husband, Bill Murray. He asked if he could write about a "little episode" we experienced last week, so here goes...

I heard the scream.

Taking advantage of a beautiful late afternoon, which have been pretty rare in Atlanta this Spring, Kitti and I rolled out our bikes. Mine needed air in the tires, but hers was ready to go. She had ridden hers a few times already, proudly, I might add. It is a "cruiser" (people seem to know what that is): a single speed, pedal-braked, wide-tired, beauty of a bike - complete with a basket affixed to the handlebars.

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Sway

I am watching my son dance his first dance with his wife. Foreheads touching, lips moving in a conversation no one else can hear, arms looped around the other’s nec

k, leaning together in a careless box step. Why do we make a spectacle of something so sacred?

I look away. And then I notice the black and white row of our three other sons behind them. Their arms are draped behind each other’s backs and they are swaying to the music. Swaying. Together.

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