The Jeweler’s Most Precious Gem
Mere weeks before my fiancé and I were to be married, we went to an art gallery in town. There, tucked in its corner, we found a jewelry store run by a husband and wife. They were young, though he
A Lesson on Self-Extracting Splinters
Sitting in our Jeep this afternoon, just typing away all kinds of deep and thoughtful things, I suddenly heard my husband yell, “Oh. My. Goodness!” I looked to the right and saw him, kneeling over a cement block of our
A Knowledge Worth More Than Einstein’s Intelligence
The first time Henri Fleischer thrust open the doors of the Smart Shopper and swaggered his way over to the Bargain Bins, I assumed he was on a quest for Victoria Falls and had somehow mistook Livingston, Tennessee for Livingstone,
Confessions of an Adjective-Lovin’ Junkie
The first discouragement happened when I was just six years old. For Mother’s Day I had written a story about a young girl who woke up in the wee hours of the dawn (direct quote), crept down the stairs, jumped
Hurting People
For three hours the woman remained in our three aisle Health Beauty Aids section -- digging through vitamin bargain bins and stalking up aisles she had thoroughly perused only moments before; and for three hours I piddled around that area
That Azalea Summer
The first weeks of summer before the earth was baked into a brick and the humidity felt like a warm, wet blanket flung across the sky, farmers came rumbling over Springcreek Christian Camp in rusted tractors attached to equally ancient
Mennonite Modesty
One of the first things my parents did after our pilgrimage from Lancaster, Pennsylvania to Nashville, Tennessee in ’89 was to find an Amish or Mennonite community to reassure themselves southern savages weren't the only ones around. For my father,
Breaking El Shaddai
Three months after we moved to Tennessee, my Grandmother Charlotte was diagnosed with Stage Four Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Even when the cancer began nipping at my grandmother’s bones until more were broken than whole, Mother continued sending her prayer cloths made
The Mending Ground of Marriage
As I write this my husband, Randy, is hunched in a New Holland skid loader, grinding gears, scooping rich clay dirt into the bucket, jostling the machine back up the earthen ramp, and depositing said dirt into an ever-growing pile.
ONE WRITER’S BEGINNINGS by Eudora Welty: Turning the Mundane Into Magic
A New York Times Bestseller and an American Book Award Nominee, One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty is a lyrical composition highlighting the every day experiences Welty witnessed as a child which later helped shape her uniquely detailed writing style.