Why You SHOULD Get your Hopes Up
I’ve been doing this new thing where I allow myself to get my hopes up. I talked about it recently on Storyline and you should read that post first in order to fully understand this one. The problem with allowing myself to get my hopes up means I’m allowing myself to get disappointed. The problem…
Read MoreYou Are More than You Think You Are
I think we often define ourselves by the things we believe we are not just as much as we define ourselves by the things we are. I am a publicist. I am a preacher’s daughter. I am a writer. I am not a musician. I am not a chef. I am not an athlete. It’s…
Read MoreWhen Your Life Isn't Measuring Up
I write this on Sunday after church, lunch, a nap and suffering through a Tracy Anderson work-out DVD. Many Sundays are like this for me. Not too eventful, as productive as I can manage with some rest and some writing mixed in. I love Sundays for this reason. But this Sunday after waking up from…
Read MoreWhen Joy Seeps In
As Christians, we have access to something that sets us apart from all others: joy. I am not sure how to feel deep joy apart from knowing deep grace, the kind that Jesus made possible. That’s why I feel joy, the real kind, is reserved for believers. I know joy is real, that it’s a…
Read MoreThe Importance of Grieving Everything
A friend of my sister’s once told her you must grieve everything. Anytime you have to say goodbye to something, someone or some place, grieve it. When you’re in a transitional phase in life, like say, your twenties and maybe your thirties too, this can mean a lot of goodbyes. To things like: college, your…
Read MoreThat One Part of Your Body You Still Don't Like
I think as women we can come far in believing in our own beauty. We embrace that curly hair we tried so hard to straighten growing up. We actually miss the red hue in those curls that we so badly wanted to be blond. We realize having a big nose isn’t so bad and…
Read MoreWhat the Imam Taught Me About Prayer
What I will remember most about my brief visit to Istanbul are the minarets. Minarets are tall towers that grow out of enormous mosques below, reaching toward the sky, reaching toward God. Some of these minarets have speakers attached at the top and five times a day you hear from them the call to prayer.…
Read MoreA War with Many Battles
Believing in the worth of your craft is a war that sees many battles, and this blog is a field dotted with white flags. There was a time I posted here regularly. From 2008 to the end of 2011, I visited this space and typed words and hit publish. It was a habit. But in…
Read MoreBeauty: The Race We're All Losing
If beauty is fleeting, why do we chase it? I was fortunate to be told by loving parents again and again that I was beautiful. Their compliments came naturally, but I took them for granted. Sometimes, I didn’t believe them and many times they even got on my nerves. Great, my dad thinks I’m beautiful,…
Read MoreGoing Home and the Hills that Greet Me
A weekend spent in the city I grew up in is always a string of hours spent remembering the things I had forgotten about home. This time it was the weather so characteristic of a south Texas summer. The dry heat and triple digit temperatures were something I took for granted until recently. I say…
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