by Ashley Larkin | Oct 23, 2015 | Five Minute Friday, Gratitude, Joy, Perspective
{The Lice Quarantine Room} We escaped from the throes of lice this week — the third time the girls have caught it at school in the last 13 months. I take that back. We did not escape lice. There is no escaping lice once they’ve made their way onto your...
by Ashley Larkin | Sep 11, 2015 | Five Minute Friday, Perspective
Really, it’s a lie when we compliment after passed years, say someone is exactly the same. I suppose what we’re wanting to say is that the essence of you — the unique spark of you — is intact. The one we recognized then, the one we see now. But...
by Ashley Larkin | Sep 4, 2015 | Five Minute Friday
I like to imagine yes as all invitation and fullness, but the reality is that yes carries on its heels a hundred different nos. I sit in the room that has held one of my yeses: my promise to myself to write. Not to let the whisper or treasure or holy nudge wither on...
by Ashley Larkin | Aug 7, 2015 | Five Minute Friday, Grace, Gratitude, Mothering
“Come here,” I said, pulling you from the bed and onto the floor where I sat. You cried as I stroked your long bangs and wisps of hair from your forehead. “But I don’t want to be seven tomorrow,” you said. “I want to stay six....
by Ashley Larkin | Mar 6, 2015 | Five Minute Friday, Mothering, Perspective, Poetry, Rest, Surrender
i am scattered bits, disconnected, harried, shaken and God bids walk, listen birds call and caw and pound, woodpecker makes morse on a hollowing limb, crow open beak screams from a high branch, lark song rises praise i am like the birds i flit, dart from a branch to...
by Ashley Larkin | Feb 13, 2015 | Five Minute Friday, Hope, Love
When you wake in the morning with first thoughts of fear for tender lives in your care, or with the day’s tasks racing past your face on a hopped-up assembly line, or with pain over that relationship or horrible misunderstanding, and all you can do is sort of...