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JUMPING PUDDLES

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When Spring is beginning to break Winter days apart in the Mid-West, there is one thing that you can always count on. The snow melts, the ground starts to unfreeze, and we are left with pools of dirty, oozy mud puddles everywhere. It clings to everything. Shoes, tires, and puppy dog ears take on a sandy coat of it. It alters the color and texture of everything it touches. It is unavoidable. As a mother of 4 busy children who love the outdoors, this time of year is one that requires patience. We graduate from piles of damp snow gear piled at the door to muddy clothing and muddy footprints tracked through the main thoroughfares of my home. Annually it leads me to day dream about the warm days of summer and the simplicity of flip flops and minimal layers of clothing. While I day dream, my children relish in the joy of stomping in puddles, making squishy sounds as they trudge, and cooking up every mud dessert they can fathom in my backyard. I don’t discourage the behavior. I am a...
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HOLES

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HOLES “God? You think God can make this better? Pfff, I don’t think he’s even out there!” I was cowering into my hunter green Letterman’s jacket. It was a chilly night for North Florida, but I couldn’t feel anything. Well, I take that back, I felt something. I felt like someone had shot holes through my heart. My body felt limp but my temper was raging. I scowled up at the dark sky, thinking about the stars. The only light I was able to receive was through them, and it reminded me of how dark I felt. How gray and lonely it was, even when people were around me.   As I did, I met the eyes of my teary-eyed friend. My grief was speaking for me and I had hurt her feelings. I quickly looked away. All there was anymore was pain, everywhere I looked, in everything I heard, said, and felt. How could anything ever be the same again? At fourteen, the end of my driveway seemed an easier place to dwell in that moment than inside the same walls where it had happened. Safer than my...
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TANGLED

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Tangled I recently had a run in with my oldest daughter. We were camping and she didn’t want to brush her waist length, thick hair out in the morning. “It’s in a bun Mom. We’re camping. It’s not going to get tangled.” All the warning signs were there. The hair at the base of her neck had become gnarled into an object resembling a Brillo Pad. I could not see the hair tie holding the mass together. I started to dig my heels in.   She had to let me help her fix it before it got worse. My dear husband, sensing the tension in the air told me to back off and let her make her own decision. If it ended badly, she would listen next time.   I slyly shook my head in agreement, looked her in the eye hoping for some sort of compliance, and gave up.   The next morning as we prepared to go out exploring, I looked at her and told her she had to unwind her hair. It had to be brushed and put up again. She skulked away and a few moments later I found her unable to even pull the ha...
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DIRT

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https://www.facebook.com/Washed-in-the-Water-2302906173121988/?modal=admin_todo_tour DIRT I want to talk about dirt. For a few years now I have been thinking long and hard about Jesus and his feet. Not about how they were his feet, the paths they took, the places they brought him, how they looked when he was praying, or the scars they held after being resurrected. I can’t stop thinking about how they were dirty. On the night of the last supper, he made it a big point to wash all of his apostles’ dirty feet. They were good men that had given up everything to follow him, and they had dirty feet. He washed their feet, and his feet stayed dirty. In fact, when he went to Gethsemane he had – dirty feet. By the night of the Last Supper, 5 days had passed from when Mary had anointed his feet. He had been out and about, and with those feet he would perform the biggest miracle that would ever occur on the face of the earth. So why am I talking about dirty feet? Why is this one point ...
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