Author: Kristen West

  • Eternal Gold

    Did you get to tune in to any of the recent summer Olympics?  Even if you weren’t glued to your TV, it would have been difficult to escape the continuous stream of updates and coverage of the various medal-winners that popped up every time you used the internet within the last couple of weeks. While…

  • Childlike Simplicity

    I recently had the privilege of baptizing a little girl during a Sunday morning church service.  According to her overjoyed mama, her excitement had been building for days and included a countdown to the event on the home front. The special morning arrived and she could hardly contain her joy as she bounded into church…

  • Stop the Bleed

    My foot was turning purple. I looked around the room. The other participants were wincing and squirming as much as I was. All of us volunteered to come to this emergency response class but judging by the distraught looks and vehement moans coming from everyone in the room, I was fairly certain folks were secretly…

  • White Space

    As a writer, I value white space – those wonderful areas on the page that are free of type and give room for the eyes to easily read the author’s words in an orderly fashion.  Without this precious space, the page would be chaotic, jumbled, and overwhelming. White space isn’t just limited to authors, though. …

  • Unlikely People

    I have never really sat down to dig into my family tree.  Just thinking of the word “genealogy” tends to make my head hurt. But, over the last several years, my brother has developed a keen interest in our heritage and has uncovered some insightful things.  For me, his discovery of our Irish and English…