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Why do Christmas pictures make me crazy?

I’m not sure when Christmas pictures started making me crazy. It took a few years before I freaked out. I can tell you our first Christmas card photo was probably taken on Christmas Eve night. Scott had just gotten home from delivering for Meeks Lumber Company, and perhaps we’d had a cocktail or two already, wrapped the dog in tinsel to offset her bandaged ears, and generally just didn’t give a flying leap at a rolling donut if the Christmas photo turned out or not. A year later, I think I threw up right after my mom snapped this picture […]

By Paula November 19, 2015

Love Gently Now

The rain has finally come. We’re wearing hats and scarves now in California. And the holidays are almost here. But Anna isn’t here. My father-in-law Tony isn’t here. A handful of my dear, sweet friends who battled cancer are no longer here. I’ve laid to rest far too many people I love in just a handful of years. And I don’t know how our family will do Thanksgiving this year without Anna. I really don’t. So I want to tell you this right up front, right in the middle of Paris bathed in blood and tears: Love gently now. I’ve stood at […]

By Paula November 10, 2015

My Boys

Recently, in some of my blog posts, I realize I’ve been hard on my boys. My burping, farting, fooling around boys. I’ve ranted about them to you, cried over them to you, but I’m not sure I’ve ever told you just how much I love my boys. Just watching them be boys puts a smile on my face most of the time. When I’m not horrified. Sometimes my boys horrify me. Like a few days ago when I found them with their Opa butchering a buck in our front yard. They tied the poor thing up in one of my […]

By Paula November 4, 2015

Is Church Really Worth It?

I’m headed to church with four little boys this Sunday morning. Scott is delivering a sermon to another church across town for his pastor friend so it’s just me and the boys driving to our service. The boys are burping and farting and fooling around in the car. I’ve told them to knock it off at least ten times. The four-year-old’s hair isn’t combed. It looks like it hasn’t been combed in a week. He’s missing his shoes and socks. I had to run back into the house to get them and find him a decent pair of pants since […]

By Paula October 26, 2015

Getting by on LESS so your kids can have MORE

I remember the day I first walked into a thrift store. I had twenty dollars and needed a nightstand for our daughters’ bedroom. I’d given up my job at the newspaper, and Scott and I didn’t see eye to eye on money. He’d put me on a strict budget, and without my own job, I didn’t have much to spend. I whispered a prayer that God would provide, not just the nightstand, but peace for my hurting heart. Giving up my writing career was warring on me. Being a writer and earning a paycheck that way, being validated that way, was […]

By Paula October 22, 2015

The Ministry of Motherhood

Yesterday, I spent some time with Ellie and her mom, Audrey. Today is Ellie’s birthday. She is a year old and beyond cute. Ellie has changed her mommy’s life in so many wonderful ways. As the autumn afternoon spun out warm and sweet with Ellie playing between us, Audrey and I talked about motherhood. The hidden magnificence of it. So much of motherhood is unseen. Unsung. And unappreciated by the world. Like the foundation of a house. Nobody looks at a house from the street and says, “Wow, what an amazing, concrete foundation! That foundation’s doing marvelous things holding up that […]

By Paula October 15, 2015

A Plea to Daddies

We need you. Desperately, deeply, undoubtedly need you. We have angry sons and unprotected daughters. We have abandoned mommies and lonely, latchkey kids. We have a country screaming for gun control when what we really need is daddy control. We need our families restored. Our faith restored. Our fathers restored. We need you, Daddies. Please don’t leave us. When it gets hard with Mom, please don’t walk out that door. Nearly every shooter in America has a daddy who has walked out that door. The last shooter’s daddy went to prison. We see it again and again in the news. […]

By Paula October 6, 2015