Home -

My Dog Evie

Yesterday I cried over a dog that’s been gone twenty years. She was a pit bull named Evie, a fifty pound mass of muscle with cropped ears and a jaw like an alligator. Most people were afraid of my dog Evie and I liked it that way. She was my protector, my sidekick, and my best friend for a difficult season of my life. Just writing about her now, I get all weepy. Evie was a Christmas present from my husband Scott the first year of our marriage. Actually, she wasn’t a pit bull. She was a blue-blooded American Staffordshire […]

By Paula December 2, 2010

JEALOUSY and GRACE

I’ve heard that the most dangerous calls law enforcement responds to are the domestic kind. Especially disputes between a husband and wife or boyfriend and girlfriend. These are the house calls that kill people. Stepping between two lovers, especially in the jaws of jealousy, can be deadly. It’s been said that more police officers have died coming between a man and his wife than any other police intervention. When we think about love bringing death this way, we usually assume some rejected guy has gone off the deep end because his lover tried to leave him, but I’ve been studying […]

By Paula November 18, 2010

The Dinner Table

Tonight we had a family dinner. It came as a surprise considering it was squeezed between an after school soccer game and a late night soccer practice under the lights of a high school football field.As we all took our places at the table for the gift of a half hour together, a fierce wave of gratefulness washed over me. Sad to say, family time at our house has become a battle. The fight focuses on finding time to just be together. The older kids are off to this sport or that activity or to work. Sometimes, I think they […]

By Paula November 10, 2010

FIVE BOYS

When I was 18, I sat down one day and planned out my life and then prayed for it to come true. Who I would marry, how many children we would have, where I would live, how my career would go: all sunshine and roses in the yard and writing, writing, writing… AND five boys… That’s what I wanted, five little boys. Scott and I were dating and he was my husband of choice. I vowed that our handful of handsome boys would grow to manhood knowing how to put the toilet seat down for their wives. Of course, I […]

By Paula November 3, 2010

DO OVERS

I feel like I’m in a do over. As a Christian, this frustrates me because why didn’t I get God’s lessons right the last time? I’m talking about lessons learned while pregnant, but the issue isn’t really about having another baby. The issue is dealing with the same old feelings about the same old things and hearing God echo exactly what He’s said to me on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth go around.I’ve learned these lessons before, why do I have to relearn them again?I recently read a book called the The Sacred Echo by Margaret Feinberg. […]

By Paula October 28, 2010

Pulling on the Rope

One of my earliest memories was trying to pull a rope out of the ground. The rope was about a foot long and smooth and white like rawhide. It was buried in the dirt at my grandma’s horse stables. My grandma said that the rope was connected to a China man’s hat and the China man lived in China, which was on the other side of the earth down beneath the stables. If I pulled real hard, the rope would come out along with the China man and then I’d have my own China man to take care of me. […]

By Paula October 23, 2010

My Uncle

We buried my uncle this past week. It’s the second death in our family in two months, the first being my husband’s stepbrother who passed away in August. Both of these men helped teach me something important about being a Christian: we are all sinners in need of Jesus and standing on a cause is not Christ-like. Loving the lost is what Jesus did. He did not walk around holding a sign that read “Homosexuals are going to hell.”The truth is, everyone who rejects Jesus will go to hell. The most straight, clean-living, caring person will go to hell if […]

By Paula October 18, 2010