by jo | Jan 1, 2019 | Everyday Stories, Memoir & Essays
I started 2018 on too cold of a morning, as all Wichitans did. It was so cold that my truck wouldn’t start. My truck had started having issues on Christmas day. I’d since replaced the battery, flushed the oil, then changed the oil. It was working — ish. Then came New...
by jo | Nov 24, 2015 | Everyday Stories
If you told me 12 years ago that my world would change forever in a few months, I either wouldn’t have believed you, or I wouldn’t have been thankful at Thanksgiving. Not really. I probably would’ve said that I’d be grateful — good, strong church kid that I was. But I...
by jo | Jun 16, 2015 | Everyday Stories
photo credit: i’m not okay. via photopin (license) We were sitting in a smaller room in the back of the church and I had made fajitas for my volunteer staff of youth leaders for the middle school youth group I ran at the time. It was during the students’...
by jo | Jun 9, 2015 | Everyday Stories, Jesus Time, Memoir & Essays, People I meet, Travel
photo credit: Lower Floor. via photopin (license) I met a man in Seattle recently. His name was Sean. He was in Pike’s Place market, his worn backpack and layers the only things suggesting he was without a place to stay. I may have taken him for a wary tourist if he...
by jo | May 26, 2015 | Everyday Stories
I wrote this poem almost exactly two years ago about some of the people in my hometown. I have moved away now, but they are still people whose faces light up when they see me in town, who hug me and ask how things are and are willing to hear the honest answers. They...