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When You’re Ready to Break

A few winters back, before California’s drought, I remember seeing snow on the pines. Big piles of snow about breaking the branches. How do the trees bear it? I wondered. And then one day I knew. After breaking, I knew. You grow back. After breaking, you grow back. Stronger. “I’m on the edge of it happening,” she told me with panic in her eyes. “I’m about to lose it.” I pulled her into my arms, whispered in her ear, “Then lose it. It won’t be the end of the world. Sometimes when you lose it, really lose it, is when you really […]

By Paula August 25, 2014

When Mercy Meets Suicide

“Did he commit suicide because he was gay?” The family friend at my uncle’s funeral shocks me with this question. “I don’t know why he did it,” I say, stumbling over my words. “I don’t think he was gay.” The family friend won’t let up. He goes on to give his opinion about suicide– in particular, my beloved uncle’s suicide– and I can hardly bear it. This conversation at my uncle’s funeral offends me all the way around. My other beloved uncle is gay and he’s grieving over the loss of his brother, too. How can this man stand here […]

By Paula August 18, 2014

The Day the Laughter Died

I grew up with Mork and Mindy. Good Morning, Vietnam. Mrs. Doubtfire. How can he be gone? The man of laughter who died of sadness. My uncle died this way, too. Always the clown. Always teasing. Always laughing. Until the day he got sad. Really, really sad. And then killed himself. His last afternoon spent with me. For years I couldn’t forgive him for this. For leaving my house to go to his house to fashion a noose. For years wondering what I could have said, could have done that summer to have stopped the tide of suicide. Because how […]

By Paula August 12, 2014

The Honesty of Drought

It’s a long walk to the water, the lake lower than I can ever remember on the Fourth of July. Yellow daisies blanket the lake bed like Grandma’s bedspread all covered with cheery flowers. A nearly dry riverbed, revealed in all its rocky glory, snakes through the heart of the shrinking reservoir. This land exposed I’ve never seen. There is honesty in drought. Underneath this lake lies an old homestead in this mountain valley where a family built a life before the government built a lake. Before the state took the valley to create the reservoir for fishing and swimming […]

By Paula August 5, 2014

Sweet August

A soft, warm wind pulses through the laundry on our clothesline. Beach towels flap slow in the breeze. Summer fading. Little boys with suds in their hair squeal down a long, yellow slide in the yard. Sun beats down. Grandma Anne worried about her lawn when my cousins and I would slip-n-slide. I try not to worry. It’s only grass. Let the boys play. The slip-n-slide I’ll drag off the lawn when the sun slides behind the house tonight as dragonflies swirl. I cut up peaches warm from the tree. Smile as I taste the fruit’s golden flesh. Grandpa Jack would be proud. He loved that his little red-haired […]

By Paula August 1, 2014

Forgiveness Isn’t Free

“I can’t forgive her.” My friend’s voice is thick with tears as we talk over the phone. “All my life she’s hurt me. I can’t go back into a relationship with her because all she’ll do is hurt me again.” Years upon years of broken relationship paved the road these two people had traveled. But there wasn’t a lot of road left for one of them. None of us live forever, and this other person was old. And alone. And desperate for reconciliation. I longed to farm peace between these hurting people. To plant seeds of hope and forgiveness […]

By Paula July 19, 2014

Crosswalk

We spent this past week doing family camp at Redwood Christian Park near Santa Cruz. For a decade, this camp has been our home away from home come the second week of July, a place where we connect with God, with nature, and with each other without all the distractions of our everyday life. I was sure this would be my season to soar because this was the first year since we’ve been going where I didn’t have a baby or toddler attached to my hip. A time for me to fly into ministry alongside Scott who teaches young people […]

By Paula July 13, 2014