Joyful Scribblings of a Bookish Wanderer

       I don't know where I got the idea that my silence was a good thing. But somehow over the formative young teen years, I developed the conviction that I had nothing to say that anyone would want to hear. Then I started a blog, and that blog led to writing articles for a Christian magazine.  My uncle once pulled my cousin and me aside and told us, "Don't ever stop writing. You have a gift, and you need to use it. We need to hear what you both have to say."      This lit the fire under me, and I wrote with a vengeance. Someone wanted to hear what I had to say.      Years passed, I got married, started a family, started a new blog.  I posted in that blog fairly often, as we hit change after change, and God kept placing things into my mind to get me thinking - and to process it, I would write another article. I was desperate for people in my life and church to understand where I was coming from. I was convinced that if they co...

      There are many times that I've felt that anticipation curl in my belly. The rush of adrenaline and the way my stoic Swiss heritage stamps down extra displays of excitement, my body letting go of the coursing excitement with taps of my finger or the inability to stand perfectly still.  I felt all of this when I stood with the other dozen or so people, everyone waiting in apparent boredom for the boarding call. I was anything but bored. I was terrified, because this 35 year old woman had never flown before.      I shifted closer to my husband, my nonchalance could have won me an acting award. Until we started down the long corridor, heading to the impossibly small plane door. Then I realized that I've watched too many cop shows, as my brain began spinning all the scary things that could happen in a narrow space like this. It only got worse when I actually started following my husband down the ridiculously narrow isle, my suitcase bumping along afte...