I've been thinking a lot about faith lately. My sister has been going through some serious soul searching for the first time in her life. The other night she stumbled across Charles Stanley preaching on anxiety, and this turned her to the Bible which she has now been devouring. It seems to have slowed the rash of thoughts plaguing her. If you've ever spent days or weeks in that seemingly never ending cycle of obsessive thoughts, you know how relieved I am for her. She's not alone in this. I've not had the obsessive thoughts waking me in the wee hours of the night or hijacking my day, but I've been going through my own little drama in my head. A little over a year ago, I met a man very much by chance. You probably don't really know this story. He had messaged me online through a social media site, and we chatted a little through messages and the phone. He was considerably younger than me, but seemed sweet enough--a nice change from the other men who had been ...

It's 3 a.m. on a school night. I'm still awake. I'm still writing. I'm still trying to figure out if I have another pair of pants I can wear to work tomorrow so I don't have to take the time to shave my legs. Therein lies the problem. I can't seem to find any clothes. Over the last year, my hindquarters have swollen like they've been eating too many pretzels and peanuts. I own two pairs of pants that somewhat fit me. I really don't want to shave my legs. This is not a new problem. I've been aware of my decreasing wardrobe for a few months now, but until I faced this leg shaving dilemma, it just didn't seem like *that* big of a deal. On top of that, I've been trying to get pregnant for the last year, so losing weight wasn't a huge priority for me. So here I am. Naked. Childless. Alone. And unhappy. I know that we're supposed to look on the inside and cultivate gratitude for our lives, but the truth is that I just don't fe...

A few weeks ago, in a "I just finished writing that final paper for the class from hell" euphoria, I put in a bid for a writing project. They were providing the research, and I figured I could knock it out in a weekend--or at the very least in the evenings when the mid-term exam schedule freed me from my usual evening duties of paper grading or lesson development. It's been an interesting project and WAY more than I ever anticipated. The research they provided me was virtually useless. (It's difficult to turn 150 words on a topic into 400 words without sounding like one of my students ostentatiously using adjectives to cover their lack of understanding.) So I've been parked on my sofa for what feels like the last ten years of my life, taking mini breaks to do laundry or wash dishes. The worst part, though, is that the process of writing--even writing these silly biographies--has sparked my creativity that seems to have been dormant for the last year. I've ...