Dear Maggie, One night last fall, our bathroom toilet flooded. It burst its banks and flowed out into our hallway and down the seams of our wood floors. It might have run clear to the Arkansas River had we not thrown down towels to stop it, creating a wet sort of dam. The toilet water … Continue reading On Leaky Toilets & Ordinary Days
For Trent & Alli It takes seven months to build one, Google says,maybe eight.I suppose that would be true of a cut-n’-paste—one of those kits constructed just as soonas the paper models Trent used to glue togetherin one afternoon. If anyone would know, it’d be the two of you,wouldn’t it?That Rome wasn’t built in just … Continue reading How To Build a House
Our wedding came just two days after spring began, when the trees were still a tangle of bones against the butter-gold forsythia down by Papa's pond. So Jared and I came into the gardening season as stragglers. By the time we returned from our honeymoon, the daffodils were already blooming along our fence, and the … Continue reading The First Year
My older sister and I grew up six years apart and about as similar as Meg and Jo March. She wore sweaters and scarves; I wore the same Mossy Oak hat several days in a row so I didn’t have to brush my hair. She kept her side of the closet neat; I didn’t know … Continue reading Meg & Jo
Dear Maggie,* Once when I was a teenager, I went to a big concert by a Christian band-–the kind of concert where you feel the drums beat under your ribcage. The event was themed around one of the band’s new songs, which dealt with the worth of a young woman who doesn’t see herself as … Continue reading On Goldenrod & Body Image
Dear Maggie,* Last May, Jared and I found ourselves in that funny place of not-yet-being-engaged but knowing we would be pretty soon, if know what I mean. It’s a gentle transition you don’t necessarily talk about, but that’s written all over a girl’s face and obvious in the things she starts buying: dishes, for example. … Continue reading To a Girl Engaged
A month or so before we started dating, Jared offered to send me seeds in the mail. This surprised me, because I didn’t know many guys who planted gardens. I knew fewer who had an abundance of heirloom seeds on hand. When I thought about it, Jared was the only guy I’d ever talked to … Continue reading Seeds in the Mail
After dinner last night, I came across a journal entry I wrote on October 20th of last year. Today was the Lord’s Day, it began—one of many that I have spent at Jared’s church. On that particular Sunday in autumn, we had read a Psalm on the drive to church; he’d set the thermostats while … Continue reading There and Back Again
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