Monopoly

I’m related to one of the greatest storytellers currently in existence. It’s my uncle. Biased? Maybe. Anyway, he was in town last Wednesday so we took him to one of our favorite taprooms and started the evening with a round of beers. Libations and stories go together like butter and toast—and Adam had a bunch. […]

Roosevelt

“Comparison is the thief of joy.” I thought it was a Proverb when the phrase first jumped into my mind a few months ago. I had spent the previous night knee-deep in discouragement after finding out through Instagram that another somebody was pregnant. Younger than me, healthier than me, with two working ovaries. One of […]

Fools

A note to self: “No” or “not yet” doesn’t mean God is deaf to your heart or done fighting for you. If it feels like He’s not showing up in one area, He’s probably setting off fireworks in another. So kill your tunnel vision. If it’s not healing, it’s companionship. If it’s not a child, […]

Mute

6:00pm on Tuesday. She was loading plates into her dishwasher, watching four kids, and dropping truth as casually as someone might talk about tomorrow’s weather forecast. Scrub a dish, speak life, repeat. And I was losing my composure on a barstool. It was nearly ten months since I had left my last church–fallen off the […]

Red Sea

The familiar crackle of thin paper sounded beneath me as I shifted my weight on the padded medical table in a third-floor room at Sutter Memorial Hospital. Trev stood at the window pointing at the apartment building across the way. “It would be cool to get up on the roof over there,” he was trying […]

fifty-five

Origin stories are becoming a thing lately. Maleficent, X-Men, the upcoming Han Solo flick–they’re popping up everywhere. They might not be homeruns, but there’s something to be said for learning where somebody’s from. The childhood trauma that sent them chasing down justice. The vat of ambiguous green goo that granted the hero his power. The chance encounter that […]

TENFOLD

I’ve been crying for the last three days. Joy tears, humble tears, awe tears. All the good kinds. Every time it happens I laugh a little (I can’t help it) because this is what I get for being such a freaking robot all of my adult life. Every time I get in the car I […]

Crash / Thank You

What a month. I went into a doctor appointment March 1st bound head to toe in nerves, fully anticipating bad news. The pain had come back, but this time on the left side (my “good side”) and therapy was no longer helping the scar tissue on the right. So my PT sent me back to my […]

To These Bones

When I was young I loved fishing out the craziest stories in the Bible—Moses parting the Red Sea, all of Revelation, etc. I guess you can say I’ve always been into Sci-Fi. (Except that this stuff isn’t fiction, which makes it one-thousand times more dope.) My favorite of all, though, was the Valley of Dry […]

.22

It’s been a rainy couple weeks. This is one of those that I’ll mostly keep under wraps. I’m not going to share it, but I’m not going to censor it either. Today is just as much a part of the story as any other day. And a real story isn’t real if we trim it […]