My Corner of the World

I have been "working" in my home as a stay-at-home mom for the past 15 years. Sometimes I've loved it and sometimes I've found it very, very difficult and have been lonely and even depressed. Somewhere along the line, I developed an acceptance of the job of  stay-at-home mom and I became proud of it. I still don't love answering the question that other moms pose to me, "And what do you do? Do you work?" There's nowhere to go after that. I can only answer their close-ended question with a negative, (what's the opposite of an affirmation?) I was just talking with someone at church on Sunday-- a teacher, who was telling me how she was getting ready for the next school year and she was telling me how it's difficult, but then she interspersed her comments with the statement, "I've never been a fan of it." I said, "Of what, public school?" And she said, "Of mothers working." I processed that and realized that, al...

Most people I know think I'm pretty crazy, but I spent part of my summer vacation walking across the plains of Wyoming with my husband, son, and his church youth group. We walked 40 something miles in 4 days all the while pulling handcarts that were loaded with our food, water, belongings and supplies. We slept in open tents, we camped on the bare ground, we cooked our meals over the fire in a dutch oven and we washed up as best we could. We left our phones and technology at home as we tried to walk in the footsteps of our forebears, the Mormon pioneers of 1856 who pulled handcarts with their families all the way from western Illinois to Salt Lake City, Utah. Many sacrificed their lives that year as they were stuck on the plains when an early winter snow fell in October. It was hard for us and for some of our youth group, but it was nothing compared to the sacrifice those early pioneers made. We were lucky to be able to walk on our nicely paved trail in the summertime and we were a...