Going home to see my family has become a scavenger hunt of sorts. After everyone’s gone to bed, I spend an hour or two alone in my childhood room digging through the assorted contents of the closet. My clothes and keepsakes are no longer there, but the shelves still hold some remnants of a decade’s […]
Read more "On Spirit Day, Shiny Pants & Being Myself"The summer before my senior year in college, my friends and I stayed in Waco rather than going home to crash with our parents until classes began again. We’d signed leases and had jobs in town so we planned on spending our summer together. Pre-Fixer Upper/post-Branch Davidian Waco wasn’t a bad place to spend a […]
Read more "Card Games Make my Friends Cry"When I was in sixth grade, my church made the decision to relocate our congregation to a new building in another part of town. Our current building had aged and the thought was that by moving, we could have both a modern facility and the ability to reach a new demographic in cities experiencing exponential […]
Read more "The Joint Service"As a teenager, I was rarely alone. My life revolved around spending time with others. Even if that meant sitting on a couch watching television together, I was content as long as I wasn’t by myself. College looked fairly similar and my best friends and I lived an uncanny FRIENDS-like existence for a few years. […]
Read more "“That One Time When ‘Sweet Caroline’ Came on and…”"I woke up happy this morning. I slept really well last night, the air conditioning made the room the perfect temperature, the pillows seemed to stay cool under my head and the rhythm of the fan made for the perfect ambient lullaby. I woke up before my alarm, something that’d usually infuriate me because bed […]
Read more "The Ten Minute Rule"I begin celebrating Christmas sometime around mid-July. It harkens back to Saturday morning cartoons hocking a “Christmas in July” ratings stunt so they could cycle through the Christmas episodes of their shows more than once a calendar year. Since then, I’ve annually found ways to celebrate the out-of-season Holiday Season that range from movie nights […]
Read more "Expect the First Ghost When the Shovel Spade Tolls One"Every morning at Austin Elementary School, my classmates and I were greeted by the clanging of metal swivel snaps beating against the flag pole. Positioned next to the front door, the American flag billowed high above us as we began a new day of multiplication tables, playing Number Munchers in the computer lab, and practicing […]
Read more "One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."