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Life Stories

The 1st Peter Blues

I live in the boonies- it takes twenty minutes to get to the grocery store; water is collected in cisterns, and everyone has a gas generator.  Nothing is convenient, but everything is beautiful- the river, the hills, the wildlife.  Unfortunately, the domestic beauty requires effort. Last week, I was grubbing out weeds from flower beds with sweat  stinging my eyes, and I thought about how hard and how long Jon could work.  His stamina coupled with his desire to complete […]

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Life Stories

Over the Mountain with Mom

Libby was busy, determined, and quick.  A petite whirlwind, she took care of us with high speed devotion and pretty much wore herself out doing it.  She wanted us to be good, to be accomplished, and for heaven’s sake- to look nice!   I attribute my relative indifference to fashion to Mom’s fixation with it, but that is beside the point. She sewed all of our “Sunday” clothes- matching suits for my brothers and fluffy dresses for me.  The dresses

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Life Stories

Old but not Done

I have really good friends- the kind who will keep my gelding for me when my fences have gaps in them; who feed him chopped up, organic carrots; who let him pick fruit off their little apple tree, and who injure themselves fixing up a shed for him.  Why any horse would want to wander away from digs like that and people like that is beyond me, but a week ago, he did it.  Frolic discovered an open gate, hauled

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Life Stories

Learning to Listen

When William, was a toddler,  he distinguished between his two grandfathers,  calling one, “Pop”, and the other “Papa Horse”.  The first grandfather is still active in William’s life, a kind man, full of integrity, eager to share the things he knows with his grandsons.  The second, who also delighted in his rambunctious grandsons (there were no granddaughters at the time),  is fading into pleasant memory. When the little boys were able to sit up and take notice, Jon would carry

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Life Stories

Standing on the Shore

Shortly after Jon and I got married, we left Alabama, loaded our worldly goods into a mid-sized U-Haul, and started driving north, towing our little car with its “Heart of Dixie” license plates behind us.  We reached Chicago’s Eisenhower Expressway at 5:00 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, and  people honked and swore as Jon manuevered the cumbersome load from lane to lane.  By the time we located our exit, sweat was pouring off his forehead, and I was a nervous

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Reflections

Becoming Heroes

I  love the story of David and Goliath.  Once, our church dramatized it  for the children’s sermon, using a retired pro football player for the part of Goliath.  He was impressive- the biggest guy I’d ever seen, and when he walked into the room in his Goliath suit, the little kids began to back up.  Their eyes, if not the size of saucers, were perhaps  the size of small pancakes.  The point that the children were supposed to carry home

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Holidays

Singing in the Snow

Not so long ago, the drive to church was a noisy affair. The car was jam-packed with family, and we were usually running late. But today I would be arriving early and alone. As I drove, mental post-it notes whirled through my mind, and I felt a little anxious. I’d worked on this map project steadily for a month: compared gospel accounts,  read articles, scrutinized atlases, pestered  my well-traveled friends with questions about Jerusalem and the outlying areas, all to

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Life Stories

Bagel Making and the Gentile

Elizabeth calls them “sadiversaries”- memorials to grief, forced remembrances of sad days. I avoid these whenever possible, running in zig-zag patterns and keeping my head low, but sometimes, they catch me anyway. I got caught when the kids suggested that we get together for dinner on January 31st. They wanted to cheer me up on the second anniversary of Jon’s death. This being the case, I thought it would be a good idea to fix my mind on a better

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Life Stories

Small Things

It’s winter, and every morning, before dawn, a dog who can’t wait one more minute to go to the bathroom, begins to bark. I get up. I put on Jon’s barn coat, cinch the hood with a hand-knitted scarf, and pull on my great galumphing boots. Then I release two of the dogs into the back yard. Dugan, who tends to run off, has to be walked on leash. So while Bonnie checks the perimeter for deer scat or foxes,

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Holidays

Thanksgiving Story

Celebrating Thanksgiving 1988, with a new dog was the last thing I wanted to do; we had four children then: ages 7, 5, 3 and 1. But Jon had seen a litter of Lab puppies, and wanted me to see them too. Not being quite so dumb as a post, I met this proposal with strenuous objections, overwhelmed by visions of doggie poop and baby poop- not to mention nocturnal walks in the snow with a shivering puppy. Jon countered

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Loss

Beyond Winter

I just took a road trip up and down the highways of West Virginia, and I didn’t mind paying the toll because the autumn color was fantastic .  As the trip progressed and the sun descended, the colors got  deeper and richer, and the leaves glowed like they were lit up from the inside.  A landscape that compelling  made me want to keep on looking;  stopping to blink was sacrilege.  But  I had to stop looking.  There were signs that warned

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Loss

The Boss

She was tiny and unobtrusive, a dainty, quiet cat.  She first appeared as a minute skin and bones, tail-less kitten, huddled in the road, too weak to budge.  My son, Josh, rescued her, telling me excitedly that he’d found a manx.  Not exactly- more like a fan belt cat.  For three weeks, the starved, pitiful bundle of dull fur spent most of her waking hours on my shoulder.  My husband, not exactly a cat lover, suggested rather forcefully that we

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