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Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri

Katy is represented by
Greg Johnson at
WordServe Literary

Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net

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Recent Posts

• Try
• Becoming Brenda Starr
• Off Beat
• Scattered
• That’s It
• So I’ve Finally Signed With An Agent. Now What?
• The Spoon
• Sciatica
• Sweetheart
• A Woman’s Train of Thought Has No Caboose
• However much we own, we are all still living on borrowed time
• After all, when restaurants shrink portions, they don’t shrink prices.
• As with everything in life, balance is key.
• Slow down, you move too fast…
• Yeah, I know. I have issues.

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(No Title) (#667)

My friend Anne writes: "I am calmly aware that I am on the threshold of all things new." You know what I love about a threshold? As opposed to, let's say, a precipice? With a threshold, the only time your feet actually leave the ground is when Someone wonderful carries you over. "The precipice of all things new" just wouldn't be the same.

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(No Title) (#668)

This is what I lie awake nights worrying about: "The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything." Walter Bagehot

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(No Title) (#669)

Spotted on a sign outside a shop in midtown Kansas City: "God Loves U! Let's Party! Elvis Costumes!" There's a logic here that frightens me.

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(No Title) (#670)

Revolving doors give me a thrill like other people might get on a high-voltage ride at Worlds of Fun. It's nice to enter one when no one else is around, and use my own steam, lightly applied, to gain access to the building of my choice. I refuse to hop in an already moving door, though, to fill a slot in an apparatus under the control of an unknown person clearly intent on going the opposite direction from mine. Why should I submit to his pace, his intensity or lack therof, his control over my circumstances? When I do, I inevitably emerge on the other side breathless, and more than a little stunned at the sudden lurching stop the ride has come to. Sometimes, my life is a revolving door, with one space filled by Someone whose eyes meet mine for just a second as He heads the other way. Sometimes, when I see those eyes, I ride the door all the way around and follow Him wherever He goes.

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(No Title) (#671)

I've taken some measure of comfort in the idea that my faith, approximately the size of a mustard seed after lo these thirty years of believing, is large enough to move mountains. Imagine what the mustard seed of faith might be able to bring forth if I went ahead and planted it. "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches." Matt 13:31 Moving mountains sounds grand, doesn't it? But there's something about those birds finding shelter in the branches of that glorious tree... Lord, grant me the grace to plant my tiny seed of faith.

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(No Title) (#672)

It's one thing for Amazon to have purchasing suggestions for me based on my previous buying habits and expressed interests. Sometimes, they even get it right. But today I spent a little time google searching to learn about a medical condition a friend's been diagnosed with, and the pop-up ads became unbearable. Normally, I don't even see the words before closing down the ads. Somehow this one caught my attention, though: "SaveNow! Recommends--Buy and Sell Ulcerative Colitis on eBay!" So that's the cure.

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(No Title) (#673)

"It's hard to believe that human beings are God's creative masterpiece," the young man said. "Like I'm the best He could do?" So I looked at him with fresh eyes, as a mother would her newborn baby, seeing nothing but potential, believing only the best. And I have to say, I understood a little of what God must feel. It's humbling, isn't it, to be the Master's finest work? His piece-de-resistance? The creature into whom all His hopes for love and fellowship are poured? And yet the Scripture says it's so. "You're the best He would do," I answered, and the young man blinked twice before turning away.

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(No Title) (#674)

You have to give God credit, really. Imagine the strategic planning, the artistic ability, the attention to millions upon millions of minute details that combined to create everything we see--and everything we don't. Imagine Him fashioning the earth for His pleasure and then, not quite as pleased as He could be, creating us to make His joy complete. Who else but God could find ultimate pleasure in what we consider to be no more than products of conception, by-products of carnal indulgences, beings who consist of nothing but the sum of their dubious parts? His thoughts are so far above ours, you really have to give Him credit.

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(No Title) (#675)

I've always believed that God is love. But it used to be, when I wondered at the vastness of the ocean or the intricacies of a maple leaf, I couldn't imagine God even noticing me. Much less loving me. Last night, I stared up at the full moon with fresh awe. Its beams fell shining upon my face, but I didn't need them to. Just seeing the moon's beauty made me think of Him for the thousandth time in a day. And remember how completely I am loved.

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(No Title) (#676)

Seventeen-year-old Kevin and I are having a baking day. I'm baking my every-so-often ten loaves of honey whole wheat bread. He's looking forward to a fund-raising bake sale at church this Sunday, and tackling an untested recipe for Hershey Kiss cookies. He followed the instructions to the letter, blending the correct amounts of flour, sugar, butter, vanilla, and eggs. The dough then needed to be refrigerated for one hour before wrapping it around the kisses. I kept up with my mixing, kneading, rising, baking and wondering where Kev had disappeared to. His bowl of cooky dough still sat on the table, no closer to being ready to be shaped into delectibles than it had been ages ago. Finally, I called down to the basement, because I swear I heard him playing pool. "Kev, didn't you mean to put this dough into the fridge?" "No," he answered, with a cue in his hand and the confidence of a guy who can read plain English. "The directions say to chill for one hour." A domestic god in the making.

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(No Title) (#677)

I have inherited a lock of hair. A dark brown wisp, tinged with a faint auburn, taped with yellowed cellophane onto the faded page of a mildewed book. I gasp when I turn the page and see it, recognize it instantly, though I haven't seen him face to face for forty-seven years. I pulled his hair more than once, I bet, and he cried or laughed, or both. And maybe pulled my hair in return. And then he died. And now a single tear has fallen on my brother Patrick's lock of hair.

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(No Title) (#678)

The two young men sauntered past my locked car in midtown Kansas City, where I sat waiting to meet up with some girl friends of mine. They began arguing then, gesturing more explosively with each step, until I wondered if the only thing preventing them from coming to blows was the cigarette they passed back and forth. Or possibly a shared philosophy, stated succinctly on one's t-shirt: "The best way to predict the future is to create it." I'm thinking the shirt was a gift.

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(No Title) (#679)

It's hard to know how to pray when someone young and lovely and vibrant leaves this world much sooner than we think she should. Somehow, I found myself barely capable of "groanings too deep for words." "God, bring some good out of this," I prayed. "May the Catholics and the Protestants in Sheryl's community come together over her death, and that of her sister." I prayed, but after years upon years of evidence to the contrary, I didn't quite believe. We just spoke by phone to her parents, Michael and Gwen, in Sixmilecross, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. Each of us shared our feelings of loss and of joy in knowing such a wonderful girl. "At the funeral, the minister from the Church of Ireland sat up by the altar with the Catholic priest," said Michael, a Catholic. The priest expressed the unity of the pastors and their flocks over the town's loss of the sisters. "And now the minister has called and asked me to speak at his church about my daughters. I think I'm going to do it." "You should," we said. "It will bring healing, and Sheryl would want it." "And not only that," he said. "The Orange Order parade scheduled for July 12 in Sixmilecross was cancelled in honor of our daughters. To my knowledge, that has never happened before." Yes, it's hard to know how to pray. But even I can groan, and almost believe. And even when we're faithless, He remains faithful.

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(No Title) (#680)

My father named me Katy because, he said, I had a face like the map of Ireland. The map has lost a landmark, somehow. A point of beauty up in the north country, very near the eyes, has changed. If you look closely, though, you will see a small light shining there, bright and beckoning, forever. The map grows old, and fades. But still I hope, when you see it, it leads you true north, to her.

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(No Title) (#681)

No one should be surprised that Sheryl Heaney, our sweet girl from Northern Ireland, is related to Seamus Heaney, the great Irish poet. This comes directly from Sheryl's blog: May 01, 2002 My Mother has an outstanding appreciation for nature, flora and fauna. Ever since I can remember she has taught me the most wonderful things about the wildlife and the beauty of our country. Recently she informed me that the grass is every colour but green which shocked me almost as much as the day I discovered Polar Bears were not white. Over this last week, Mum found a little robin's eggs nestled in the branches of the hedgerow that surrounds our garden. To me it would be a major task to find something so small in such a vast area, yet Mum watched the robin fly in and out attending to her flock. She found them first when they had not yet hatched and therefore she checked a couple of times a day. When finally the little birds hatched she was so delighted that I, plus the rest of my family were made look and admire the beauties she had discovered. "5 in total", she exclaimed with the upmost joy. I arrived in from school yesterday at 4.30 to find my Mum in quite a dull and almost depressed mood. I knew immediately something was wrong. It had been an awful day with sparatic showers that were so forceful they were painful on any exposed flesh of a person. The nest of the robin had been too close to the top of the hedge and unfortunately all 5 of the chicks were killed. The annoyance on my mother's face seemed one of great sorrow and regret, although they were only birds. I pondered on her look for a moment and I wondered whether she was so sad because of her love for the birds or was it beacause she too has 5 of a flock and her heart was with that of the robin???

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