greaterthansparrows

Poor, neglected blog--I actually got home on Tuesday, and this is now Saturday.  On Tuesday, I was home about 20 minutes, and went to take a nap.  I fell asleep hard, and woke in time to fix dinner.  I had a lesson to give the next morning, and told myself I would write that afternoon, after it was done.  Weeelll....didn't. I have the opportunity to be part of a new venture titled the Nauvoo Times, an LDS online journal which will launch on Monday, May 14.  Everything had to be in the managing editor's inbox (herself out of town until today) by the end of yesterday.  I had the pieces written--though one of them was clear with me that it had to jump ahead in the lineup--to cover the requirement plus the next couple of dates, but it was still crunch time.  Maybe lurch time is a better description.  With the blog, I can pull and amend something if I need, and with this, once it goes out from me, it's set in stone.  A whole different audience w...

This is the first of the two sample columns I submitted in December 2009. We're in This Together      My daughter calls it the year my mother broke her back and my father broke his leg.      It started with a massive disc rupture one Sunday morning, a sudden jump from varying sciatica to screamworthy, unremitting pain.  Fearful of the emergency room bills, I endured till the next morning when my husband drove me to the doctor.  I could not stand, I could not sit, I could definitely not drive.  We decided to try to manage the situation medically, but by summer’s end and the CT scan it was clear that, terrified or not, I had two choices—surgery or be crippled for life.  We scheduled the surgery.      Ten days post-op, my family left for Utah.  Our oldest daughter had to get back for her sophomore year at BYU, and my grandmother was celebrating her 95 th birthday.  We decided that everyone should g...

We all have things that are demarcation points in our lives.  Some we anticipate, even expect:  leaving home for the first time, getting married, having children.  We know that life will not be the same, before and after. Some are things we don't expect and wouldn't choose.  Cancer, death of a child, our home burning down, we could make a list.  The bad ones tend to overshadow the good ones when we consider life-altering events, though the joys change our lives too.  We just tend to take them more for granted. For me, one of the significant demarcation points was what is referred to around here as the "original accident."  "Original" because it was the first and worst of four times that I have been rear-ended.  Without that damage to my body, the last one, in fact, would have been a non-event in terms of harm. My best friend, Barbara, and I were going to the temple.  She usually drove into town to me, and then I would drive us to the te...