Women Who Eat Chocolate

My newest column which will be published next week. Early for you on the blog. Check out all my columns on The Holmes County Bargain Hunter .  My August is a precipice, a steep cliff that keeps dropping away from me ever steeper. I stand on this edge not only peering out at the drop, but looking ahead in the distance. I can’t quite make out what’s ahead in the hazy ephemera, but I know it’s there – solid and warm - waiting for me to arrive. My husband stands with me on this cliff, just a step back, and together we watch our last child prepare to leave the familiar nest of home. Together we launched our eldest into her future some five years ago, and I wept. Four years later we delivered our middle child to her destination, and I wept. As I write, in two days we deliver our youngest to his starting point. I have been adamant over the years that they consider what is different - to see what is out there for them that doesn’t keep them near my sticky fingers. Thos...

"Silence becomes cowardice then the occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly." -Ghandi

Though not yet published in print or on the website for The Bargain Hunter , here is my newest column. Some successes and some failures - yes, we all have failures and should voice them so we do BETTER. Let's be honest here. Successes and Failures: Summer 2014 Edition August is half over. I repeat - August is half over. I really did have a lot of plans for this summer. Read books that have been languishing on my shelves, go swimming, start writing my book. Alas, I did read two books and went swimming twice. Go me. Did I start writing my book? No, but I feel the writing bug coming on and soon my house will be a vast, empty echoing hall of its former self when the kids leave the end of August. There soon will be no more excuses. This is my compiled list of successes and failures (not really failures per se…) of the summer of 2014. Hey, we all have aspirations of at least TRYING to accomplish things, don’t we?     1) Hunter’s grad party – success. We’ve ...

Processing much. My aim is to separate our trip to Mexico into small, digestive pieces. Heaviness, pressed down, is what we felt. These are the tip top thoughts I'm feeling now. Will bring more to you as I process each moment. This blog will be published next week in The Bargain Hunter column, but I'm bringing it to you a bit early.  I hope to someday not sit in a quandary, or a tizzy, or a moment of abject disgust with myself and the momentum I fail to have at times. My life is wasted in small moments, tiny and thin, that bring bigger and bigger amounts of time passing by me like so much of a life gone. I have come back from the edge, older yet not so much wiser. This plane of life is so transparent it takes my breath away so that I cannot think to even fill my lungs with air. I have found what I desire in life – my love, my kids, and my home. Yet still, is it enough to make us whole? Enough when my entire soul is yearning for more and more of what I can’t say. Is it enou...

My daughter Selena recently participated in a mission trip to NYC. She has written about it and I found it so moving that I wanted to share. Here it is, in her words. You Make Me Brave I’ve found that I am someone you would call a dreamer. I hold these burning passions in my heart that make me anxious, anxious to get out into the world and do something. There is a psalm in the Bible that keeps reoccurring in my head when I try explaining why I know what I am supposed to be doing in this life and it reads, “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” This past year I earnestly sought out the Lord, experienced Him in indescribable ways, and truly fell head over heels in love. God has shown me this light that radiates from within me, it longs to shine on areas that sit in darkness. I’ve been called to a mission, one that is dedicated to ministering to lost areas of the world who have never heard of the Most High. Whether that be spreading the Wo...

Hate. Encompassed by idle words.  Too many people, they say.  We have no room, they say.  But our land is vast, I say. Let them in.  Love. Love. Life is too short to hate. We will all die with debt. Having spent too much. Have we shared our wealth? Have we loved? I would give everything to help one soul. Or will we close the door? Our lives remain the comfortable same. No more. No less. We can rant and rave for either side. But have we loved? Because that's all there is. Will you die clutching tightly? Or will you open your clenched fist? Your words, which fall like so many fire sparks. And burn. Open the door. And love.

In the spirit of the beautiful game and the upcoming semi-finals and championship game of the World Cup this weekend, I am posting my newest column (which hasn't been posted online yet). I'm also posting this with the original title. Haha. What can I say? I don’t care if you don’t like soccer. My take on The World Cup I don’t care if you don’t like soccer. The World Cup has taken over my household and everyone in it and around it. Daily televised games are turned on whether I have housework or writing to do – it must be playing in the background. It has taken hostage of my Twitter account and as well my Facebook. It holds me in its thrall as I watch nation after nation stride proudly out onto the pitch and sing their national anthems with a fervor I’ve little seen anywhere else. I wait impatiently to see the fans in the stands wear their colors and crazy uniforms signifying love for their team. I hang on every world those lovely Euro announcers say. The world, at least f...