Veteran’s Day is personal to me. My father is a Vietnam War veteran.  While I haven’t heard many of his stories I know that the circumstances he found himself in, the atrocities that he witnessed, and the lingering aftereffects can never be erased.  No matter how much time goes by. Today, he proudly wears his…

I grew up in the U.P. (Upper Peninsula) of Michigan where Christmases are always white and it’s not uncommon to be bundled up in hoodies and fleece blankets to watch fireworks on the Fourth of July. You might be able to imagine then what a shift it was when this northern gal moved to Georgia…

It was the season of hayrides, corn mazes, and Halloween.  I was roughly 7-years old when my parents, my younger brother, and I boarded an old yellow school bus that had been salvaged from the junk yard to give people rides to a small pumpkin farm. I was excited, young, and naïve.  I truly thought…

It’s one of the most popular children’s Bible stories – Jonah being swallowed by the big fish.  The tale of an Old Testament prophet who tried to outrun God and spent three days inside a fish (talk about a clear “time out” lesson) only to be spit out and given a second chance to obey…

“Even the devil can quote Scripture,” I said during a conversation recently with a close friend of mine who was navigating the emotional pain of realizing how someone she thought had loved her could say “true things” but live quite the contrary. Most of us want to think the best of people, don’t we?  We…

She was gone.  I watched her walk into the pitch black night until she became just a speck that disappeared.  I collapsed, inconsolable, onto the bricks of my front porch that stormy summer night more than a decade ago with my mind reeling between grief and fear.  Would my daughter ever come home again?   Most…