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Today I turn 35.  For the first time in my life, I am not shocked to be here, still spinning on this precarious planet. I am not overwhelmed by the weight of my own mortality. I am not surprised to find that I have been given the gift of another year, as has always been my…

There are so many stories I want to tell you. Stories of our daughters’ births, lives, and deaths. Stories that have ended and stories that are just beginning. Some stories will take months and years before I can share. Some stories I will hold sacred and secret until the end of my days. But this is the story I…

The two girls I carry below my heart. The three boys who run circles around me all day long. I want them to be mine.  I refer to them as such, of course. My twins. My sons. Our children. But oh, the flimsy power of possessive pronouns. They have never been mine to keep. I…

Dear girls, This is the first thing I know about you. You are girls. This is still a stunning revelation to a mom of (previously) all boys. Of course I want to say with hindsight’s surety that I knew, but your father heard those hopeful certainties with pregnancies in the past. He will not believe…

Another morning is blueing into being over the thin horizon behind the dark trees. It is icy cold, fresh frost ringing the windows and slow snowflakes drifting down behind the glass. I am trying to convince myself to get out of bed. Already the toddler is singing from his crib, and his brothers are gobbling eggs…

Before I had children, I had a hazy image of life with kids. I don’t think I idealized it as pure ease and smooth delight, but the montage of pictures that would flash through my mind looked much more like parenting’s “best of” reel. Taking them to the playground on sunlit afternoons. Chasing them laughing before…

If we had left the house a minute earlier. If he hadn’t gone off to fetch the soccer ball instead of getting in the car. If I had sped down the dirt road instead of slowing to take the icy stretch slower. We neared the intersection, that one by the entrance to the interstate that they put…

Four times I’ve been pregnant during Advent. The first time. The second time. The third time. Now the fourth time. Four times I’ve teared up at all the hymns about waiting for a child.  Four times I’ve connected with the stories of Annunciation and Visitation in a tender and touching way. I know many mothers have shared…

Floored. We are so floored by the response to our news about the twins. Friends, family, strangers from across the globe – we’re amazed and humbled to think that you’re praying for us and our babies. (I still feel incredulous every time I make that word plural.) I can’t thank you enough for your kind…

We always hoped for four kids. I can’t remember when the dream started, way back while we were still dating. Sly small conversations trying to sort out where a Significant Other stood on the Big Questions: marriage, family, faith. He was one of four. I was one of five (four after my brother died). We always…

I have an uncle I never met.  You’re right. And you have uncles in heaven, too.  Yes, I do. But when you die, part of you stays on earth, right? Is that your soul?  No, your soul is the part of you that lives forever. The part that goes home to be with God. Then…