This weekend I am in Louisville at a retreat for homeschooling mamas. I met an amazing woman last night. I'll call her Janie. She is an amazing woman with an amazing dad. While meeting the women sitting around me at dinner last night, I asked Janie where she was from. She said Watauga in ... View Post

I have a friend who has a childlike wonder. I'll call her Jenny. Jenny's childhood was tough -- really tough. Her adulthood is, too, but somehow she has kept that childlike wonder. I like blue and white dishes. One day Jenny stood looking at some of the ones I have picked up here and there. She ... View Post

A few weeks ago Ray and I went to dinner with a couple we had previously known only through business. It was the first time we had done anything with them socially. When Ray and I go on outings with close friends, we girls sometimes sit in the back to chat while the fellas ride up front. As we ... View Post

Imagine that you get up every day and head downstairs to fix breakfast. The trouble is: you have no idea where the kitchen is. You are hungry. Your children are hungry. You want to give them something to eat, but you can't because you don't know the way to the kitchen. When Ray and I were almost ... View Post

At church on Sunday morning, Miss Katherine walked sprightly down the side aisle. "How are you?" I asked. She responded with a brief but honest comment about her 94-year-old body's less-than-perfect condition; and then she added, "And thankful." In less than twenty words, she illustrated an ... View Post

It's been three weeks since I've been in town on a Sunday, so I enjoyed catching up with friends at Helen's Restaurant yesterday afternoon. It was a joy to see person after person stopping by to see Dr. Jack, who sat with his family at one of the two big tables in the center of the main room. Dr. ... View Post