You’ve heard about the perfect pastor, right?

• He makes $400 a week, wears good clothes, drives a nice car, buys books, and donates $100 a week to the church.

• He preaches exactly 15 minutes and then sits down.

• ‍He condemns sin but never steps on anybody’s toes.

• ‍He visits ten shut-ins a day—the sick, the hospitalized, the bereaved—and is always found in his study when needed.

An old, splintered door with a torn screen and chipped paint once graced my front porch. A birch basket of pinecones sat on a red chair in front of the door and a “Welcome” sign hung from the top left corner.

The plans for a two-week bike and barge tour out of Amsterdam were set in place last fall. Winding through the Netherlands’ scenic geography. Windmills. Castles. Quaint coffee shops with delightful pastries.

Dan and I took a 6-week road trip through Canada and up into Alaska a couple years ago. Near one of our campsites on a beautiful bay surrounded by blue mountains, we came across this baby tree growing out of an old stump.

Every once in a while, something re-reminds me to be grateful, to sit up and pay attention. This time the reminder came from Ann Patchett’s book Run, a fiction.

One of the side characters, Father Sullivan, sat in an armchair toward the end of his life, looking out the window at the falling snow, pondering:

When I served as cancer survivorship coordinator at the St. Charles Cancer Center, there were a number of amazing volunteers who helped us manage some really great programs that benefitted our patients and their families.

From time to time, I look back and marvel at how God brought me to my current address. If, for example, I hadn’t been able to return to the one place that felt most like home—a place I moved away from after my first husband died because I couldn’t afford to stay—then I wouldn’t have met Dan.

April 10 is National Siblings Day, which caused me to think back to my childhood years with my siblings. Sandwiched in between brothers, I’d always wanted a sister to stand strong with me against the two of them. But alas …

It was a week of scuba diving, exploring the beach bare-footed, boating past mangrove trees, reading, entertaining monkeys and macaws, marveling at the sloths, catching a sunset, making new friends, and enjoying international cuisine.

Will Parker Anderson, senior editor with Penguin Publishing Group, pens a Substack blog with content that is meant to be encouraging and informational for those of us who clack away on our keyboards in hopes of telling a good story. Occasionally, though, he shares words of wisdom to writers and non-writers alike.

If you watched the recent Milano Cortina Olympics, you might have noticed a new event or two. Skimo, short for ski mountaineering, made its debut this year. It’s a sprint on skis with about 230 feet in vertical climbing.

I’ve boiled chicken and turkey bones for soup broth. I’ve thrown ham bones in with the pinto beans to make delicious pots of bean soup. But I’ve never pondered how I was creating something from what normal people would consider to be garbage. Bones.

“So,” I said to my husband Dan. “About Thanksgiving and Christmas … what are we going to do?” It was our first winter holiday season as newlyweds. And it was the year of COVID.

My favorite time of the year has always been from November through December. Except …

The women from my church called to see if they could bring meals while my first husband was actively dying in the hospital bed in our living room.

“That’s so kind of you,” I replied. “Thank you, but it’s just our daughter and me, and we don’t eat much.”

Back in the olden days, there were paper calendars with pretty pictures that hung on our kitchen walls. The one on display in our home tracked our crazy, busy schedule with two children. Looking at that calendar with all its crammed-full squares gave me a sense of worth. How skewed was that?!

“Aside from the cancer, this has been the best five years of my life,” he’d said to his brother-in-law before passing. His words were shared at his funeral, and they stuck with me. Five years ago, my nephew Michael was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer. It forced an early retirement as a pediatrician.