As usual, my children are my greatest teachers. My oldest just started to run track this year. She got a late start, because most of her peers have been doing it a couple years longer than her, but that didn’t deter her at all. Plus, like me, she has exercise-induced asthma, and running track is…
I’ve mentioned more than once what an all or nothing personality I have. I’m either perfect at everything or completely apathetic. I’m either dressed up quite nicely or in my pajamas. I either eat 100% healthfully or I eat like complete crap. My house is either perfectly clean or an absolute wreck. And I have…
In the Book of Mormon, there is this passage: “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad.” (2 Nephi 2:11) I recently had an experience…
I have a friend named Sarah who is an incredible artist. In fact, if you are in Utah, you may be very familiar with her gorgeous tulip paintings—I’ve seen a few in real life and they are breathtaking. Sarah recently wrote a blog about her artistic process that touched my soul because she was able to articulate…
Last week’s Newtown Tragedy has upset me more than almost anything I can think of in my life. I was happily doing some Christmas shopping on Friday when my mother texted me and asked if I had seen the news. She gave some brief statistics and I sat in my car in the parking lot, absolutely horrified. And…
This is not technically a book review, but since the series is called “The BOOK of Jeremiah” I’m going to just call it that anyway. Besides, it’s extremely unlikely that I will ever review a DVD again, so why go to the trouble to create a new category? Just before we left on the Epic Vacation,…
I had my birthday a couple weeks ago. My gift to myself this year is simply the permission to say “no.” I am a yes-woman, through and through. When I am asked to do something, just the thought of saying no gives me the shakes. I am not sure where this anxiety comes from, but I can…
Grant us peace. When Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote the cantata back in 1936, he had no idea the profound impact it would have on the soprano soloist in a small town in Upper Michigan some 75 years later. I look like a dork, but I promised my mom a picture of my dress, and things…
Last ditch effort to revive the dead phone. Phone in a baggie full of uncooked rice and placed in oven with the light on. It didn’t work, though the phone is still in the rice bag and now on the radiator. The bag is also full of hope. It all happened on Ash Wednesday. The…
Last week I found myself in need of a new wreath for my front door. The one I made a couple years ago was pretty much destroyed in a windstorm last year, and there was no way to fix it. Nor did I feel much like making something. Instead, I quickly ordered an inexpensive one…
One of the most difficult parts to learn in the opera I just finished was a scene that incorporated “Shall We Gather at the River” with a Finnish Lutheran Hymn. In that scene, I was assigned to be a Methodist, and so I sang “Shall We Gather at the River” which is a hymn I’ve song…
This is what we woke up to this morning. May I remind you that it is April 4? And yes, I am aware that this is happening all over the country, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. We’re coming up on 6 months of winter and I am so ready to get…