Lauren Flake - Grief & Texas
My fearless, four-year-old daughter was overtired. We were on round two of pool play for the day at my dad and stepmom’s new house, and she was happily jumping from a smaller elevated pool area down into their larger pool over and over again. This time, however, she forgot that she wasn’t wearing her float and leaped […]
When my oldest daughter was born, many people immediately said she looked almost identical to her father, my husband. We quickly matched up baby pictures, and they were right. God is a God of diversity. She’s his image and name bearer, yet she’s unique. She has both my nervous personality and my slight build. She […]
A couple of years ago, our lawnmower broke just as the neighborhood deer began to foal. Over the next couple of weeks, we found four beautiful, tiny fawns hidden in the tall grass of our Texas hill country front yard. Initially, we were shocked to discover newborn babies seemingly abandoned, but we soon learned that […]
“This is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another” (1 John 3:11 ESV). A hand-painted sign above my front door reads “Love one another” in elegant script. While the lettering and words are beautiful, I have the sentiment displayed there not because I like how it looks, […]
The past year has been a difficult one, full of challenges much like the decade before it. I sometimes feel like a battered ship struggling to stay afloat in an unrelenting storm. And last fall, the seemingly endless stress of balancing marriage, motherhood, and caregiving—while trying to “keep it all together” and hide my depression […]