“There was another life that I might have had, but I am having this one.” ~Kazuo Ishiguro I rummaged through four plastic bins in the basement before I found them. The three photo albums and four school yearbooks sat tucked into an assortment of hand-stitched pillows, a sombrero, a dirt-smudged doll, and a pair of maracas. My childhood ephemera. I…
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Better Together: On Self-Reliance and Asking for Help
“When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up–one on one side, one on the other–so that his hands remained steady till sunset.” Exodus 17:12 I’m a sucker for online personality quizzes. I took one recently with less than flattering results. According to…
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Reclaiming Our Place
A small creek ran through our neighborhood of manicured lawns and look-alike condominiums. Thick walls of gray rock under wire-mesh netting sat on either side of the water’s edge, containing it, keeping all things wet and wild within its borders. When I was a child, I loved to explore there. I loved to escape the stale air-conditioned spaces of our…
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When You Want To See Results For Your Labor
For the first twenty-one years of my life, I listened to my dad preach to a small crowd of believers gathered in stackable metal chairs in a store-front basement every Sunday. He’s a natural, born to teach the gospel from a pulpit or a street corner or sitting at the head of the dining room table. When my dad traveled…
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How to Gather a Life
The week we moved into our new, sparsely-furnished rental house in London, I realized I needed something of my own to make the place feel like we lived there. Without something of us, it looked as if we’d embarked on Rent-a-Life rather than rent a home. Our dishes, clothes, and a few poorly chosen decorative items (collectible teddy bears, I’m…
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