Build Houses & Plant Gardens

Build houses and live in them; and plant gardens and eat their produce.Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there and do not decrease. Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile,…

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Appreciation

I went to ninth grade afraid.  Like many students who leave Christian schools, I entered the “real world” (in my case public high school) with a head full of warnings. I was somewhat apprehensive that in my first month of school I—a fourteen-year-old honors student, a decent violinist and a mediocre volleyball player—would be ridiculed…

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Honest Doubt

          You say, but with no touch of scorn,           Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes           Are tender over drowning flies,  You tell me, doubt is Devil-born.  Alfred, Lord Tennyson, from “In Memoriam A. H. H. OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII: 96” I’ve never been a huge fan of Mom Blogs. (Yes, I know that they’re…

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Stolen: A Diaper Bag

It took us almost two weeks to realize that the diaper bag had been stolen. In Seattle, apparently having one’s car broken into is a rite of passage, an initiation into the club of people who really live here.  And a few weeks ago, we finished our transformation into full residents. We’ve taken the bus, endured…

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Sometimes You Can Go Back Home

Winter Greenlake Saturday afternoon, I venture out to Trader Joe’s. There are two, about equidistant from our new house by Greenlake, but honestly neither is terribly convenient. I know this, because I’ve had this problem before. This EXACT problem. Because I grew up about a mile from where we live now. So I remember thinking,…

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Rolling Over

A newly-engaged Timmy and Kristi, February 2013 Six years after I got engaged, I’m awake before dawn in a too-bright room, in a house I just moved into last night, listening to a baby roll over. To be accurate, I’m listening to my daughter, who is both proud and a little annoyed that she’s just…

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Showing Up

Sunday Morning in Numbers Hours of sleep last night: Six (but no more than one at a time) Minutes to leave the house: 40 Meltdowns over leaving the house: One Minutes to drive to church: 20 Bridges crossed: Two New tunnels driven through: One Minutes to find parking: 20 Blocks walked to church: Four Daughters…

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On Entering A Bookstore In My Thirties

All the people you could have been had you chosen differently—they haunt the bookstore alongside the person you became and could still become. Steve Edwards It’s been ages since I was alone in a bookstore. I’m not sure I remember the last time, actually, though to be perfectly accurate I’m not even alone now. But…

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An Eclipse and An Inauguration

My daughter wakes up at 9:00 PM. I hear her upstairs, stirring, waking up from what she must assume is a nap, in her pajamas, in the dark. Someday, I’ll put her to bed and she’ll just stay asleep. But not today. Oh well. Anyway, I’m hardly busy. I’m literally lying on the couch in a…

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This My City

And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them: Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. from “Chicago,” Carl Sandburg It seems like…

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