this life together thing

The Truth About Hiring House Help

She says she would like to talk to talk to me for a minute. She’s pausing at the top of the dining room stairs, broom in hand, and she’s smiling, but her expressive eyes show that the smile is a cover for her nervousness, her embarrassment.** She just started working […]

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Thoughts on Marriage, sixteen years in.

2000 When Aaron asked me to marry him, he did it three times. (I wrote about the first time here.) He says he wanted to give me lots of opportunities to back out. The third time came after a period where I kept making plans for the next year, assuming […]

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Together

She sits across from me at my kitchen table, an untouched cup of tea in front of her, and speaks out the details of the very worst moment of her life. Her eyes pour out her pain, and her voice breaks and everything, every hurt, every hard thing in her […]

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42 photos/reasons why I love my husband – Celebrating 14 years

Moving overseas, they say, can be one of the hardest things to put a marriage through. I’d have to say that they are right. Aaron and I have probably had more fights this past year since moving to Thailand than in the previous 6 years combined. He rocks the tribal […]

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My Dad’s Example

When I was younger I went to one of those church leadership types of schools that had no grades and was basically a series of week long seminars. There were people of all ages, from many different parts of the world, and we lived in a motel near the church, […]

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It’s on me

He took me out for ice cream for my birthday, trying on phrases in the same way he’s trying on manhood for the first time this year. “It’s on me,” he says in the card. He’ll pay, with money he earned. “What can I get?” I ask him in the […]

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Thankful

“I’m assuming you know what’s happening with Mom but just in case you don’t she’s being admitted to the stroke ward at the hospital.” It’s the night before Thanksgiving, here in Thailand, I’m up prepping food for the next day. We’re having new friends over to celebrate with us, because […]

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What I See

We decide to eat lunch in a sit down restaurant near the border the day we renew our visas, rather than a street stall, mostly because we also need a bathroom. Six ladies and one girl, in coordinating tribal shirts, seat us and bring our dishes, ice, drinks, menus, etc. […]

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13 years

When I discovered I was pregnant last year, just as we were laying our plans for moving to Thailand this spring I told Aaron by texting him a photo of the pregnancy test while he sat in an airport, on his way for yet another business trip away from home. […]

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Hormone Stew

When you wake up from an unintentional 3 hour nap, having fallen asleep while lying down to get the baby to sleep, and your first thought is to be angry at your husband for having the nerve to sit there while you slept and not bother to wake you, it […]

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