I can still remember the exciting summer of '91 before my senior year of high school, when educator Marva Collins came to my Oklahoma hometown. While I hadn’t heard of Marva Collins before that time, I learned she was a big deal in the education field who’d been featured in Time, Life, and Newsweek magazines. Ms. Collins and her good work had also ...
It was one of those moments when bad news shocked me to my core. I had no clear course of action except to fall down on the well-worn carpet next to my bed, sob my eyes out in my white cotton comforter, and pray the only word that came to mind: Help. Over the years, the Lord and I have met at that bedroom spot too many times to count. We met there ...
When we were stationed in Hawaii, I homeschooled for one very, very, very long year. Let's just say it wasn't a raving success because I let distractions interfere as much as my kids. This proved especially true with those subjects I didn't really like — namely, anything involving the left side of my brain. One thing said more than once by my ...
During my son’s senior year of high school, he and a few of his friends had a rather telling conversation with their choir teacher, one my son later relayed to me. In the course of their chat after class, someone asked this teacher – who is young, smart, and beloved by students and parents alike – what she thought was the biggest problem she sees ...
In an eatery tucked away in the corner of town, David and I sat at a table for two. It was a noisy, crowded restaurant, one composed of several small rooms with tables and chairs squeezed in like some kind of furniture Tetris. Old photos and mementos covered every square inch of the walls. I looked around from our tiny table and began to feel ...
Before the USAF moved our family to the Rocky Mountain town of Colorado Springs, we were stationed in the tropical islands of Hawaii. I still remember landing at the small island airport for the first time, walking hand-in-hand with my four-year-old daughter towards baggage claim. I was exhausted after the long flight and terribly nervous about ...
A couple of months ago, I made my way north to Fort Collins, Colorado, home of Colorado State University. My twin sons, both excited and nervous to be driving toward their freshman year of college, followed behind me in their granddad’s 2003 silver Honda. We arrived alongside a sea of other wide-eyed kids and teary-eyed parents and spent the ...
In the fall of 2011, we discovered our daughter, Faith, had a broken neck. Before and after her precarious but successful corrective surgery, Faith endured strict limitations on her mobility. For months, she reluctantly kept her physical activity to a minimum. Playing on the jungle gym during recess at school? Nope. Riding her bike around the ...
There's a particular Starbucks I frequent, one that sits across the street from the courts where my daughter, Faith, has tennis practice. While Faith works on her tennis game, you can often find me working on my writing game at one of their outdoor tables under an umbrella. I'm there a lot this summer. One day, after ordering my typical iced ...
When my family had lived in the Midwest for a year, and I was in a season of parenting three tiny humans, we attended a church full of beautifully kind and loving people. After some time, I finally began forming relationships with a few of the good folks there. One particular Sunday when my husband was out of town for work, I managed to navigate ...
