Balancing Motherhood & Artistry
This Wednesday, while hiding in the bathroom, I tried to call local libraries and bookstores to line up book events for The Alliance, but my girls (four years old and nineteen months) couldn’t stand being separated from me. So, they pounded on the door and twisted on the handle until I had to open it and usher them inside. The three of us stood in front of the sink, looking at each other in the mirror, as I continued to wait on hold. A few hours later, I received an extortion letter that required me to sit on the floor while a stranger told me how much I (allegedly) owe. Needless to say, Wednesday was not my favorite and had my husband praying before dinner, “Thank you for this . . . day.” And then he opened his eyes and grinned at me across the table because, in that pause, he'd purposefully omitted the word “good.” But then, as my husband and I were tucking our eldest into bed, she looked at me and said, "Did your book camed out?" I titled my head. "My book?" She nodded in the dark. "The one with the plane. Did it camed out?" I touched her chin. "No, not yet." "But your other ones camed out?" I smiled at her, my throat tight. "Yes. two." My husband and I looked at each other across her pink comforter, and the stress from the entire day just melted off me. I could tell by my his smile that it had melted off him too. Sometimes, if I’m just honest with you (and what's the point of all this if I'm not?), I wonder if I’m making the right choice by pursuing an author career while my children are so young. I wonder if, otherwise, I’d do more macaroni crafts, read more books, be more patient, bake complicated, raw-food cookies that my children actually like. What if--once my
Publishing Wisdom From a Whippersnapper
(Celebrating my birthday at a B&B with my husband, so I uploaded this vlog instead.)
Visible Ink
Every Tuesday night, my father totes a bucket of lyrics scrawled on 2 x 4 scraps and her father plucks chords on a cream guitar inlaid with mother of pearl.Thus, Barbie and Ken’s love story unfolds against the soundtrack of
Stargazing
Sitting up at night with my infant child, my feet rocking the glider on their own, plots begin to stir and thicken as characters bob to the surface in the sleepy cauldron of my mind. Tomorrow, I think, swaddling my
Talk About A Rude Awakening
My older brother was always the one who would wander the halls at night and was once found sleeping at the edge of the loft outside his bedroom; a ten foot fall my father had tried to prevent by shoving
There’s Still Time For You…
When I was fifteen, twenty-five seemed so far away I wrote out a to-do list I hoped to accomplish within the span of a decade. I tried to be easy on myself, since I hate having goals that I fail
Chasing My Father’s Dreams
When I was three, my family moved from Lancaster, Pennsylvania to Nashville, Tennessee, so my parents could be missionaries and so my father could find a home for the country gospel he’d jot down on scrap lumber with his carpenter’s
A Window of Borrowed Time
During the wedding reception, I stand in a corner of the room in my cinnamon-colored bridesmaid dress, remembering how everything used to be, trying to comprehend how much everything has changed. I met the bride, Madison, my freshman year in