Category Archives: family

Charis, Current Events, family, Grief, Oriental NC, Politics, Relationships

Walmart’s Little Experiment Screwed My Hometown

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20160202_165125In recent days headlines have announced Walmart’s decision to close their experimental neighborhood stores just a few years after the pilot program began. For many this is just another announcement of a mega-retailer changing strategy in order to improve profits. But what is a small failure to Walmart has huge, real-life impacts on the small towns where many of these neighborhood stores were built. A few examples are Oriental, NC; Redwater, TX; Chicago, IL; and Rose Hill, Kansas. People lost jobs, but not before many towns lost their locally owned, family run grocery stores and pharmacies that had adequately served the same community through thick and thin for decades.

In Oriental, Town N Country, in business over 40 years, held on as long as possible against the monopoly and sadly closed at the end of October, 2015, less than three months before news came that the Walmart neighborhood market would be closing. Oriental is a quaint fishing village with a lot of quirky retired people.  We didn’t make national news, but now we’re left with no grocery store and no pharmacy in our village of 900 people.  Our marriage with Walmart cannot be annulled and it came with no prenuptial agreements, so we are left to deal with the mess left on our doorstep. Continue reading Walmart’s Little Experiment Screwed My Hometown →

Christianity, Current Events, Death, family, Grief, Love, Muslim, open letter, Racism, Relationships, Religion, Terrorism, Uncategorized

I Love You, Terrorist

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I love you, terrorist.

You have a name, like I do.

You were once a child. We both were, once.

Perhaps we’ve shared the same joy that comes from riding a bicycle. We’ve shared the same flavors of favorite foods, the beauty of sunsets, the feeling of joy while playing a fun game.

We’re both human. We share the same stars, moon, sun, and earth. Our bodies work in much the same way.  Food and water nourishes us and sleep invigorates us.

We both have parents and families that taught us how to discern right from wrong until we grew old enough to explore different sets of ideas and ways of thinking.

There are people in our lives we love so deeply whose losses we would grieve terribly should anything happen to them. Perhaps you’ve known grief at a young age, like me.

We are more alike than we are different. Continue reading I Love You, Terrorist →

#sickbody, Death, family, Grief, health, Invisible disease, Love, Patient Advocacy, PTSD, Rachael, Relationships, sickness, Survivor, Women

World Prematurity Day

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Source: World Prematurity Day

Death, family, Grief, Love, public speaking, Rachael, Raising Ruth, sickness

Remembering Rachael, Raising Ruth

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Rachael died the day before her daughter was due to be born.

But baby Ruth was already over four months old when Rachael died. She was born so early she weighed less than a pound – 0.95 pounds, to be exact. That’s less than the weight of a four-stick package of butter.

Our physical bodies are on loan to us.  They will die. It is our spirit bodies that are unique and will never die.  It is our spirit bodies that fall in love; our physical bodies only transmit it through touch. It is what we leave behind of our spirit bodies, our love, that becomes our legacy. Continue reading Remembering Rachael, Raising Ruth →