broken engagement

A few weeks ago my friend Sophie and I had an impromptu wine and movie night. We shuffled through her stack of DVDs settled on a retro, stupid-funny movie called Superstar. If you’ve ever heard someone say “SUPERSTARRR” in a weird whisper voice, this is where that comes from. 20-something-year-old Will Ferrell is the main character’s dreamy crush and the snooty, blonde stepmom from Parent Trap is the popular mean girl. Most of the movie was absolutely ridiculous. And when I say ridiculous, I mean the lead Mary Katherine Gallagher, a quirky Catholic school girl desperate for her first real kiss, talks dirty to a stop sign and other inanimate objects for practice. But there were some surprisingly sincere takeaways. When Mary’s grandma finally gets on-board with her granddaughter’s dream of being a “SUPERSTAR” (aka winning the school talent show), she tells Mary she must compete well and for herself, not just to win over her crush.

If you’ve scrolled back through my blog, you may have noticed that several months went by when I posted absolutely nothing. “Where’d she go?” you wondered.Continue Reading

In my family, cottage clean up is a mandatory, all-hands-on-deck kind of thing. We get the house looking all cute for summer because summer means visits from friends and grandparents, and that means appearing a touch tidier and more normal than we actually are. My task was to resurrect the garden. There were no flowers to plant. I was simply asked to yank out the weeds, mess up the soil, and spare the rose bushes that were somehow alive after a northern Michigan winter.

So, pretending I had a green thumb, I started attacking the gnarly weeds and old plant roots with my mini shovel. I yanked, raked, and dug until I ached all over. For those of you who are gardening newbies like me, don’t try this at home unless you’re prepared for a full-body workout! There were many, many weeds and they dove real deep into the ground.

Then it hit me: THIS IS MY LIFE, or what God has been doing in it this past season.

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