It’s not my fault you turned out the way you did: Strong, happy, Confident, kind. It’s not my fault you turned out the way you did: Scared, defiant, Angry, sad. It’s not my fault you got first place, or last, Took a chance, or didn’t, Saved a place or couldn’t. It’s not my fault they didn’t see your goodness, Or helped when they should have. It’s not my fault you chose a Twinkie when you should have had a salad, Or a salad when you should have had a twinkie. Though it may be

A boy flies a kite in a field. A windy park, some extra time to kill, two people: a boy and his mom. The mom knows one kite will be difficult; the other--not so much. She wants to give her son the easy choice, but he won’t have it. He wants the challenge. She watches as he throws the kite up in the air and dashes away, the kite crashing to the ground again and again. She wants to make it better, easier, to take away the challenge, especially when he becomes frustrated and it

I have a vision in mind of where life will lead. I plan it out in neatly printed rows next to hopeful checkboxes: call the doctor, take back that shirt, say no to that activity (why does saying no feel like so much more effort than saying yes?). I know what a typical Tuesday should look like because I scheduled it, prepared for it, and prayed about it. But here it is, another Tuesday that typically does not look like the one I planned. I feel burdened by the weight of bless

Revision is a part of the writing process where you decide what you want to keep, what you want to take out and what you need to further clarify. I’m a college writing instructor and one of the things I’ve been surprised at the most is my student’s reluctance to revise their papers. This is far more than laziness or lack of instruction. They genuinely seem terrified to do things like move a sentence or change a word or two. Once I asked my class a technical question about

When’s the last time you wrote something significant? Was it in a long ago educational setting like high school or college? We’ve come to think of writing as something we suffer through in our learning years, but thankfully get to shed when we’re done, but as a college writing instructor, I can tell you that writing is so much more than a research paper. In college writing courses, the ultimate goal is to teach you to write specific types of texts so you can be successful in