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The Day My Van Locked Me Out
I was eight months pregnant, and it was the Friday before Easter. I woke up that morning excited to go into school without any students present. I worked with some especially fun women—they understood the benefits of learning through play and applied that idea to every area of their lives. We did the work we needed to do: tidying up the classroom and getting crafts ready for the next week. We also did work we didn’t need to do: catch up on the exciting events we’d missed in each other’s lives during the last week and sip coffee from my French press. We even got to wear jeans. That morning,…
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The Great Cupcake Stand-off: A Tale of Two Sisters
The last lonely cupcake stood solemnly in the middle of the table. My sister sat at one end of the table and I sat at the other. “Well, I don’t want it,” Missy said. Missy didn’t like cupcakes. Too many carbs, too many calories. All she ate were fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and the occasional whole grain—the diet of a typical woodland creature. Her hair was a mousy shade of brown. She sat across from me as poised and delicate as a butterfly resting on the edge of a flower petal. I felt like a great lumbering bear snuffling through the dirt looking for her next meal. I tried not…
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The Mom of Legend
“I heard she had five kids and lived in a house with no dishwasher.” “I heard she had seven kids and lived in a house with no dishwasher and ran her own business from home.” “I heard she had ten kids, lived in a house with no dishwasher, ran her own business from home, and somehow found the time to write!” Every woman standing around Lynn rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. Nobody could do all that.” “No, really, I heard she could,” Lynn said. The women standing in the small clique dispersed around the room. Similar conversations were happening all over the church basement as the Greater Grand Rapids…
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Onward Down the River: A Kayaking Story
I shielded my eyes as the sun glanced down on the clear blue lake water ahead of me. I spied the narrow opening in the reeds—the perfect size for me and my kayak. I plunged my paddle into the water and made my way toward the small break in the reed line. Bright green lily pads covered the surface of the water as I entered the river mouth. A few white lily flowers adorned the lily pads like lovely brides among the guests at a wedding. They swayed in the slight breeze moving across the lake. Underneath the water, entire weedy forests bent in the gentle current of the river…
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A New Writing Course and A Story
A couple weeks ago I began a course offered by The Habit. Through The Habit, Jonathan Rogers (author of the Wilderking Trilogy) teaches courses, sends out newsletters, and moderates book studies–all to help writers find community and tell their stories. It’s an incredible website filled with incredible writers! The title of the course is “Writing with Hobbits.” It is a creative writing course in which we study J.R.R. Tolkien’s writing techniques in The Hobbit and then practice using them in our own writing. I plan to post all of my writing pieces for the course on this blog. In the future I probably won’t give any explanation for the pieces,…