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Why Do We Lie?

“I’m doing fine,” she told me. “Are you sure?” I asked. “I’m sure,” she insisted. “Okay,” I said. It was almost like dancing, a step here, a turn there, social skills twirling us across the space between our cell phones. But as I hung up, I knew she wasn’t fine, and I ached. I think she did too. Two polite people saving face and not seeing the other’s face. The real face. The real problem. The real pain. Why do we lie in times like these? Times that deserve an honest heart? “How are you doing?” “I’m doing fine.” Before […]

By Paula February 20, 2014

Love in the Rain

We didn’t use an umbrella that first night. Just stood in the rain, got wet, and got to know each other. He tried to kiss me. I pushed him away. I was a senior in high school. Scott a freshmen in college. Two kids who fell in love fast and crashed and burned hard. We dated for a rocky year, spent nine months apart trying to go our separate ways, then wobbled through another year engaged before we married. Still young. And then practiced poverty together. Our first big married fight was over a pumpkin. Scott said we couldn’t afford […]

By Paula February 13, 2014

Be Still And Know

Staring at the Supra perched on the narrow embankment, I marvel our son has walked away from another automobile accident unscathed this week. “Your kid is really lucky. I can’t believe that ditch didn’t flip that car.” The tow truck driver pulls out his chains to hoist the Supra off the ledge onto his flatbed. It’s dark and cold and drizzling rain. Scott stands in his T-shirt, head bent against the weather. It’s been nearly two hours since he flew out of bed when the call came from Luke. A daddy rushing out without a coat to rescue his son. […]

By Paula February 8, 2014

The Everlasting Arms

Sometimes a miracle unfolds right in front of you and you don’t even know it. When he fell out of the tree, I missed it. Our two-year-old Cruz was throwing a tantrum. A loud, wailing tantrum in the house with me, but the sudden scream from the backyard pierced that. As a mother you know. There are happy screams. Mad screams. Scared screams. And then there are the wounded screams. Before I realized I was running, I was running. We met at the back door, six-year-old G2 collapsing in my arms on the threshold. I laid him down on the […]

By Paula January 30, 2014

The Cost of Rain… our idols?

“I have never seen this before,” my seventy-one-year-old dad, born and raised in California, said yesterday as we stood in the field with snow geese migrating overhead. “It’s January and they’re already headed back to Alaska.” In my planter, a daffodil unfurls. All my bulbs are sprouting in this springlike weather. I’m watering our lawn to keep it alive, but not as much as I’d like to since California is already in conservation mode with this drought turning ugly. California farmers are worried. Really worried. Cattlemen are running out of feed. Walnut farmers are irrigating their trees. We can’t spray our […]

By Paula January 23, 2014

PERSPECTIVE

We ended 2013 with a trip to the ocean. The weather was winsome. The waves wild. The boys full of joy. Until we lost the car keys on the beach. Have you ever searched for a small set of keys on miles of surf-washed sand? Two hours later, we hadn’t found the keys that fell out of Scott’s pocket while he played with our sons, though I prayed hard. Really hard they’d turn up. Everything we brought with us to the beach, including our towels, were locked in our Suburban. The boys stood wet and cold in their bathing suits […]

By Paula January 16, 2014

A Tender Heart

For the past several months, I’ve gathered, cracked, and shelled walnuts. Our trees are now big enough to bear a crop, but the trees aren’t large enough to harvest by machine so we hand gathered this year. Walking the orchard with buckets and bags picking up the nuts. Gleaning… as the poor gleaned in Biblical times. I love candied walnuts and made a ton for Christmas, which worked out well since buying presents this year felt like parting the Red Sea. It took an act of God to tuck gifts for our eight kids (in case this number throws you, […]

By Paula January 11, 2014