After reading Don Miller's book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years last year, I've thought a lot about what it means to live a good story. Yesterday, Emily and others at Prodigal Magazine shared their thoughts about life and story and how one informs the other. I read a few of the posts and they reminded me once again, when we write our stories across the big, blank canvas of our lives, not one of them reads exactly like the other.

Other people's stories fascinate me. I want to know what makes them laugh or cry or fall to their knees. I ask myself how they love, and what moments take their breath away. I love watching people live their story all wild and tangled and free, because it helps me live mine the same way. For a long time, I feared I would live a small life. I don't mean small in significance, but small in experience. We don't measure significance by the things we do, but by the person we become. Our experiences shape us, and break us, and build us into that person.

I don't fear the smallness anymore. I live as full and deep and wide as the canvas will allow. And when I think the edge of it will rise up to meet me, I find there is room to go further still. Sometimes I catch myself looking too hard for the boundaries and forgetting that boundaries don't tell a good story--essential elements do. So, I add in people who act silly, and places that make me cry for the beauty. I throw in a page or two of international intrigue, a smidge of trouble, and momentary lapses of sanity, until the edges recede and the story begins right where I left it.


What are the essential elements of your story? And how well are you living it?

She showed up at the front door, suitcase in hand, wearing genie pants she purchased at a Spanish market. I think she is taller than she was five days ago because I had to raise my eyes further than usual to look up at her. She bent down to hug me and it felt strange to be the one receiving the hug instead of giving it.

I went to my favorite spot. The one where I can watch the trees dress according to the seasons. I ran first, and then I stopped at the car, zipped up my jacket, and grabbed the camera. In the two years I've been going there, I have never seen another soul taking photographs. I'm mystified by it. Maybe after a while we become numb to the things that bring us the most beauty. Writing here helps me fight the tendency to go numb. You help me remember to chase those things down.

While walking around the lake, shielded by a huge bank of tall grass, I could hear a horse raising hell on one of the paths. It was whinnying and snorting so loud, I could hear it clear across the lake. Once I emerged on the other side, I followed the sound with my camera and he came into view. He was gorgeous, but totally resistant. The girl riding him was struggling to stay in the saddle, she was yanking and pulling him, and giving him a good smack on his rump. But I tell you that horse did not want to be broken. He wanted it his way or no way.

I lost sight of them again, and half an hour later as I walked to the car, they passed within a few feet of me. I wanted to take another photo, but when I saw the girl's face red with exertion I decided against it. She walked beside him now, instructing him in a low voice, jerking on his bridle while he pawed at the ground and tried to bite the mouthpiece clear off.

He was a powerful horse, and she was clearly fed up with trying to get him to do it her way, but they were at a stalemate. Neither one was ready to give up on the other; he was strong enough to pull away, and she was almost frustrated enough to let him. I watched until it became awkward, and then I hopped in the car and drove away.

I think of that horse and his girl when I feel like I'm hanging on to someone or something for dear life. I have kids and a marriage and a faith which, at times, seem to pull in every direction but the one in which I want them to go. I suppose it is the nature of wild things to want to run free. Sometimes I'm the wild thing, and sometimes I'm the girl trying to tame it.

But, you know, I don't think I would have it any other way. If we're not the ones doing the leading and the breaking, then we are the one being broken. And if we are willing, we are put back together in a new way, one that has strength and purpose and the ability to carry someone else on our back.

This morning, I visited my daughter's classroom for the class Fairytale Showcase. When I arrived, she jumped up to hug me and said over and over 'Thank you so much for coming, Mom. Thank you, thank you so much.' Precious. A bit overly effusive, but precious nonetheless.

While we spent most of our time on the Red Sea, we traveled to Cairo for a day in order to see the city, visit the pyramids of Giza, and go to the Egyptian Museum. You can imagine how thrilled the kids were. Museums and old stuff. Throw in some sand and wild traffic, and it's every child's dream vacation.

Cairo is a riot of noise and color and movement. There is no rhyme or reason to traffic flow, safety measures, or rules. Bomb sniffing dogs, yes. Freedom from stalking and personal harassment in the marketplace, no. I have never seen anything like it.

We drove through the city, crossing the Nile River, and driving to the outskirts of the Sahara. The pyramids rise up out of the sand at a distance, and when standing in their shadow, looking in one direction you will see the high-rise buildings of Cairo, and in the other you see dune upon dune of grit and sand.

The pyramids were magnificent, and lived up to every Indiana Jones fantasy I've harbored since I was a kid. They are built like a jigsaw, a complex set of locks and keys. Each piece was cut by hand to specifically fit into the one next to, beneath, and on top of it. It was a glimpse into the engineering genius of that age, and as someone who still can't cut a paper heart with any degree of symmetry, I was awed.

From the pyramids we took a short drive out into the desert, following a caravan of white nondescript vehicles full of tourists. We stopped for photos of the pyramids at a distance and then arranged to ride the camels led by a group of Bedouins. Our camels were led by three boys, children of the desert, who spend school hours walking straw-hatted rich folk in circles in the sand. I tried to get caught up in the exotic excitement of it all, but I could not stop thinking about the boys. Wondering what they think of their life, what they think of me, and if they sometimes wonder at the strange nature of it all.

They walk day after day in sun and sand, at the end of a very short leash, wandering into nowhere. I wonder if they find joy there? If, when the last straw hat dismounts their beast and the last camera is shuttered, they go joyriding on camels beneath an endless, low-lying desert sky? I don't know. I don't know where they find joy, or make peace with their past, or with their present. I do know this: I left there unsettled, thinking of them, of the great pharaohs of the past, and of the holy words in Ecclesiastes proclaiming that there is nothing new under the sun. The ancients gathered up their treasures under Heaven, hoarding them under blocks of lock and key, and what remains is nothing more than dust and shadows and children of the desert.

And I am left wanting to leave more than the sum of this behind.

Spring break is nearly over, and we have spent the last few days recovering from our trip to Egypt. Me, from a nasty upper respiratory infection and a mountain of laundry, and the kids from a serious case of re-entry boredom. This leads them to do things like 'play fight' which inevitably ends with one sibling really fighting and the other sibling in tears, or to developing a sudden love for practicing the piano but only before 9am or when I need to make a phone call. To say that I am craving a little quiet is an understatement, however not the kind of quiet that is preceded by a loud huff and a stomp out of the room. Apparently, this is how certain tween members of our family are affected by re-entry blues.

My boy called our trip a breakthrough for the family, a revelation if you will. We tend to take lots of city breaks which involve, in little people terms, old stuff, walking, museums, and more old stuff. Not exactly top of the must-do list for the under-18 crowd. In Egypt, we spent the majority of our time at a resort on the Red Sea swimming, snorkeling and enjoying time together as a family. This was made infinitely more enjoyable by the addition of a heated pool, a few lounge chairs, and a midday mojito.

We spent a few days in the sea, snorkeling off a dock in clear, shallow reef waters. That glimpse, that tiny cove of color was such a revelation into the imagination of a God who created such beauty for His own pleasure, knowing there are worlds below that we will never set eyes on. One afternoon, we slipped into the water and were immediately surrounded by hundreds of neon purple jellyfish. I won't lie. There was some screaming and flashbacks to the scene in Finding Nemo when Dory and Marlin are trapped and repeatedly stung in a cloud of jellyfish. We were assured they were harmless and once back on the dock, we lay on our stomachs, hot sun on our backs, watching slippery purple globes rising gracefully to the surface. I want to remember that afternoon, little brown bodies stretched out, reaching for things usually deemed untouchable.

Much of Egypt was like this, so much deemed untouchable. From the food on the street, to the water in the tap, to the children eating with dirty hands from a cloth spread on the curb, to the broken and wasted land. So much.


It made me long for the day when all of those things will be redeemed. When the sting of the past and present will become a graceful rise to a perfect and whole future.

It felt as if we were chasing Eden, looking for the great beauty beneath the rubble of fallen, corrupted things. I saw it in the sea, their smiles, the moonlight on water, and the way they wrap themselves and the land in pigment and spice.

I know there are only glimpses of it this side of Heaven, but someday it will be just as it was meant to be, and we will be able to stretch our hands long and touch it.

On the drive home, the kids and I talk about our day. E is still under the impression that I lie around and spend most of my time channel surfing. For that matter, so is his father. However, clean clothes and full bellies tell a tale, one that doesn't involve laundry fairies and grocery laden leprechauns. In the car I listen, mostly between the lines. Today, we skip over the inevitable tattling on one another, and launch straight into Very Important Matters. These almost always center around which classmate had a cookie in their lunchbox or who said a naughty word in class.


My boy tells me that they are learning a new song in band class. Band consists of nearly every fourth grade student, each toting an instrument bigger than their head, and one lone, loud band teacher. God bless her. She managed to get them all playing the same piece, with the delightful command to 'Play it faster'; always a crowd pleaser amongst the fourth grade set. According to E, the trumpet players mistook faster for louder and in their excitement drowned out the rest of their bandmates. He said with a sigh that it became too hard to keep up. He finally quit trying, his horn drowned out by the noise of the others.

I sighed too because who better to understand this than his mama? I know what it is to fear being drowned out by the louder, better, stronger, more talented among us. Don't you? There is always someone who will be heard above the cacophony of noise, one who will play with more passion, one whose talent will rise and seemingly drown ours out. There is always someone whose music will shame us into putting away our instrument.


Too often we let them. We allow their music to drown out our own, until we are silence instead of a symphony. I tried to tell this to my boy, feeling a lot like the pot talking to the kettle, but I know he needed to hear it and so did I. Maybe you do too. Maybe you need to be reminded that you are an essential part of the piece. The song isn't the same without you. You are not silence, you are a part of a symphony. It's time to pick up your horn and play.

We stole away for the weekend, just the two of us. The last two years of work travels and graduate school and general Swiss confusion falling away with every turn of the train wheels. Before we left, I told him I had a good, long think. I pulled up the covers on every quiet corner of my heart and made sure there wasn't anything lurking there, anything that might rise to the surface and ruin an otherwise lovely day. He replied with an 'Oh, good', bearing just a hint of sarcasm. There have been a few unfortunate incidents in which my husband believes he is taking me away for rest and relaxation, and I view it as more of a therapy session. Minus the level headed therapist and unbiased opinions.

He asked me if I had any expectations; what I needed out of our time together. I didn't hesitate saying, 'I just want you'. And so we had each other, hand in hand, by the lake, in the sun. We sat on a green metal bench and stared across at the mountains reflecting in the water. I squinted my eyes really tight and imagined I could see our future.


We could be here or there. With a lake and some handholding. The details were fuzzy, but I could see the shape of the future. Him and me, sitting on a bench, dreaming together through gray hair and knotty hands and grown children and grand babies. Maybe there will even be a room with a view.


It was altogether wonderful. As we sat across from each other on the way home, the soft rumble of train wheels underneath and the shadow of white capped peaks above, I knew that I'd gotten exactly what I asked for, and then some.

No therapist required.

On Friday, I wrote for a few minutes on the word prompt: Brave. For days, the word has rolled around inside me, gathering dirt and moss along the way. Brave gets dirty if we let it hang around for a while. I'm no trail blazer, friend. I find people who are doing big things and I hitch a ride. My husband is one of these people. Nearly every exciting thing that has happened to me, has been a direct result of placing my feet in his footsteps, on a path he paves. For a season, that was enough. While mothering my littles, it was enough for me to take his hand and let him lead because I was too scared and too bone tired to do anything else.

I spent countless hours reading to my littles back then. A favorite with my girls was The Very Lazy Ladybird. The story follows the ladybird as she decides to look for a new place to sleep, but first, she needs to find a comfortable way to travel. She latches on to all manner of animals, but none are a perfect fit for the journey. The tiger is too loud, the kangaroo too jumpy, the tortoise too slow. Each one is busy living life in the best way they know how, but none of their methods suit the ladybirds delicate sensibilities. Her final attempt to find the perfect place was on the trunk of a sneezing elephant. With an emphatic 'Achoo', he finally sent her flying to freedom and the realization that her wings were made for flight.

Following people who live brave is a good practice. I learned valuable lessons in the following, like how to take risks and live with passion. I learned how to chase dreams and what courage looks like up close. But there comes a time when practice is not enough, when we realize that following forged paths will not get us where we want to go. Brave beckons from an altogether new place, from behind thickets and hedgerows and thorny vines. Brave forces us to see that our fragile wings will bear our own weight, and they will make us fly. I still follow my husband because sometimes courage can be caught, but I've started to look for the new places too. The ones where I trample on vines and beat the air blue with my wings. And slowly, I am finding them.

Do you think about bravery too? What kind of path do you find yourself following? I just signed up for my first writer's conference, which will require a certain amount of courage that I'm not sure I possess. How about you?

In eighth grade, my English teacher Mr. Mono asked us to write an essay on our dreams. I didn't think to ask for clarification on this, and true to my matter-of-fact, pragmatic self, I wrote an essay on what I dreamt about the previous night. He returned the paper and gently suggested that next time I might consider staying on topic. I, thinking I was on topic, came away slightly confused. Apparently, no one else shared my confusion because standing tall and proud at the top of their papers were letter grades, while scribbled at the top of mine was a large, red question mark.

As far as dreams go, that question mark has hovered above my head ever since I saw it written across that lined sheet of college rule paper. I wondered if I wasn't the dreaming type. Or that I didn't dream big because I didn't know how. Or, maybe that growing up on a solid diet of realistic expectations with a high value placed on practicality, swept me clean of dreams. I didn't realize that for some of us, dreams gather in the cobwebbed corners, the ones that can't be swept clean no matter how much life and well meaning adults try.

Big dreamers draw me in; they both fascinate and overwhelm me. Sometimes I want to be like them, and then I remember that my dreams are spun in the dark, still places. I don't know what makes some of us out-loud dreamers and some of us silent dream weavers. Out-loud dreamers paint the walls and floors with their dreams, while others of us carefully spin them in the corners where the floorboards meet.

There comes a time though, when the afternoon sun hits the shadow and gossamer strands just right, and the beauty of it takes your breath away. Your dream's intricate design becomes perfect and clear. And you realize that you've been creating it there all along, you just needed the light to shine just so in order to see it.

We wait for the bus every morning along the outer edge of my neighbor's garden. There's a bend in the road, and a tiny, smooth curb where we stand and watch the world go by. The world being limited to other children walking to school, a stray cat, and whichever adults are up and at 'em.  Today, the world was reduced to our seventy year old neighbor standing in the garden in his underpants. Not shorts, not pajamas, but underpants. It was raining, there was fabric clingage, and I wanted to wash my eyeballs out with hot sauce.

God bless him. He felt no shame.

When we first moved here, we attended a few sessions of cross-cultural training. Having lived and traveled overseas before, we were well aware of this European penchant for no-shame nudity (or semi-nudity as it were). It's cultural, I get that. I was surprised to learn that shame shows up elsewhere among the Swiss. It shows up in their fear of failure. They are careful, cautious, and deeply suspicious of change. Risk is not programmed into their DNA, as it is with most Americans. Risk can lead to failure which inevitably leads to shame.

It doesn't matter where we come from or how we feel about standing outside in our skivvies. It doesn't matter if we take risks or hate risks. Shame shows up. It is the party crasher that enters under the guise of having a good time, and then gets crazy, smashes your coffee table to bits, and refuses to leave. Grace, on the other hand, waits patiently for an invitation. And once invited in, stays for a while and helps you clean up the mess that shame left in it's wake.

Open the door wide, invite grace in, and watch shame escape out the bathroom window.

On my way to the hair salon, I walk by a large bank with four artfully arranged display windows. While banking and art make rather strange companions, I always look forward to the seasonal change in the display. I never try to make the connection between the two, the banking and the art, instead I simply enjoy the aesthetics. They are a little bit of beautiful in an otherwise logical and mathematical environment.

I had a hair appointment today, so I hopped off the tram eager to see what the new display would be for spring. Each window was arranged with dressmaker's forms clothed in perfectly tailored architectural drafts. One wore a sport coat, another a parka and honeycomb scarf, with the loveliest paper-like fringe. One was dressed in everyday wear, and the pièce de résistance, a feminine form in a wedding dress with a full bustle and cluster of gathered paper at the shoulder. They were amazing and creative and probably made from something other than paper, but I loved each one.

As I passed by, those images stayed with me. Lines and graphs and numbers laid out in such a way as to create a plan, something that needed to be followed exactly in order to produce the desired outcome. Then that plan was bent, pulled, bunched and cut into the shape of something recognizable but infinitely more interesting than, say, four walls and a roof. No doubt, it was the dress that got me.

I'm learning to live this way; to walk around with a blueprint, a rough draft, some numbers and figures and ideas on a page. But, to allow for them to be manipulated into something more than I think they can be. I can't live by a two year or a five year plan. Oh, I mentally draft them, but they are flat and tidy pieces of paper with some funny looking lines scratched into them. They don't have the sweep and drape of a wedding dress. Or a honeycomb scarf with delicate fringe. And that right there is where I find freedom. There is a blue-print, a first, second and maybe even third draft.  But, it's up to me to take what exists and fashion it into a wearable work of art, complete with gathers, folds and a cluster of something lovely on my right shoulder.

Do you find yourself stuck in drafting mode? Get out there and fashion a dress made out of your best laid plans. Take it in, let it out, simplify, ornament, create something astonishing with your life.

This photo has nothing to do with anything, other than the fact that it doesn't make me feel like I'm going to throw-up. That's my only criteria at this point in time. I feel like I've been living a scene out of the movie Contagion this week. Albeit, on a slightly less harrowing and life altering scale. Our 'vacation' week is almost over, and if vacating from everyday life is the goal, then I need a do-over. We're falling like flies here, victims to some sort of bug that laughs in the face of Lysol antibacterial spray.

But, you didn't come here to hear about my battle with the bug. While sitting around waiting for it to strike its next victim, I've taken the time to read some favorite blogs, a book, a few poems, and listen to some new music. I wish I took the time more often, really took the time to slow down and enjoy something nourishing. Too often I treat my soul to a steady diet of fast food, and it limps along bloated and dissatisfied. I've been thinking a lot about this lately, about feasting on things that nourish. I think, for me at least, it requires a simplifying, a cutting out of the extraneous nonsense that I fill up on and learning how to 'be' instead of 'do'. Do you find that too?

I've found myself longing to live more simply, even in the everyday things. Our life is complicated and harder to navigate than most, the expat thing is exciting, but it's no picnic in the countryside. And while this is the life we choose to live, I know there has to be a way to make time for soul-feasting within the current framework of our crazy life.

How do you make time? And when you do, what do you feast on? I'd really love to know!

I'll go first:




Wishing you a wonderful, feast-filled weekend.

PS I don't recall mentioning it, but I am now on Twitter. I know what you're thinking. It's one more thing adding to the noise of my life. Anyhow, I'm there, I tweet, I'd love to meet you! @KimberlyACoyle

The only thing that ever excited me about my blessedly short career in nursing, was the opportunity to meet people and hear their stories. Often times they weren't in a position to give it to me themselves, instead I had to glean what I could from the notes in the nursing history, which were often as compelling as a fiction novel.

On any given night I could read about triumphs, tragedies, broken and unbroken families, survivors and heroes. I could read about addiction and recovery and see the results of each one wrapped up in an ill fitting blue gown. Those written lines were important, but it was what was between them, that made the story so intriguing. I couldn't always predict by the written story, the real one I would see written on their skin when I stepped into the room and snapped on my gloves. Poverty in circumstances didn't always translate to poverty of the soul. Wealth in family and fortune didn't always equal wealth of the spirit.

I remember one patient in particular, a woman I met on the maternity ward. She had a genetic disorder that caused her entire body to be covered in small tumors. Every inch of her body rebelled against her, and it couldn't be beaten into submission with cosmetics or surgery or an airbrush. On paper and on first glance I pitied her. That is, until I spent ten minutes watching her. I saw her beauty then, her grace, her mother-love, the glow from every rebel cell. She was beautiful, and so well loved. Her baby didn't see different, her baby saw mama. That's all. She was one of the wealthiest, most beautiful women I've ever met. My pity said more about me than it did about her.

That's the thing about stories, they teach us so much about who we are and who we are not. I love to know what's behind the skin, the weary eyes, or the strong hands. They speak to me about who I am in the scheme of this very small life. They speak to me about who you are too.

What part of your story would you like to share? I'd love to hear it.