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

Katy is represented by
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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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E me at katy @ ngenius.com

(No Title) (#757)

From the Fallible Archives, January 2001 "While we don't know yet if Bush is a great man, we are reasonably certain that he is a good man, and for that we are breathing a sigh of relief. Greatness is a revealed trait, often unable to manifest itself until trying circumstances arise, and so we shall have to wait."

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(No Title) (#758)

My favorite t-shirt used to be the one that says, "What If the Hokey-Pokey Really Is What It's All About?" I can't even use it for a nightshirt now, it seems so shallow. My second favorite t-shirt says, "If A Man Speaks In the Forest, And There Is No Woman There to Hear Him, Is He Still Wrong?" This one will feel OK to wear again in public someday, but who can say when? My final favorite t-shirt says, "Chocolate--It's Not Just for Breakfast Anymore." To everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season. And a time for every t-shirt under heaven.

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(No Title) (#759)

If we show God's love by praying for our enemies, and we demonstrate His mercy by forgiving them, should we not also declare His righteousness by stopping them?

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(No Title) (#760)

"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one." Charles Mackey A New York Times article is reporting that more than two thirds of Americans admit to being depressed, many unable to sleep and multitudes unable to focus on their work. "Homeland Security" may restore our collective mental health, or maybe it will only defend the ragged borders of our minds against fresh, virulent attacks from without. What about the parts deep in the interior, where anguished hostages are already held without ransom? Heartland Security is accomplished slowly, personally, one by one. By the One who knows each heart, and knows what it will take to heal each heart. Homeland Security for all of us. Heartland Security for each of us.

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(No Title) (#761)

"I can assure you," says the wife of Tom Burnett, one of the passenger heroes on the hijacked plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, "that he was not calling me to whisper sweet nothings, or to reflect on his life..." What could be more extravagant than imagining that you, in the hour of your death, will be afforded the luxury of time standing still, so that you might have a few moments to reflect upon your life? Reflect today, tonight, this hour. Repent if God is calling you to repentance, and then rejoice when your heart is right with Him. But don't delay. Who knows what might be asked of you in that hour, the hour of your death? Who knows whether courage might override reason and whether you, instead of fleeing to save your own life, might rush headlong toward eternity to save another's? Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart. Because tomorrow, there may be no time left to reflect.

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(No Title) (#762)

We should all just get back to normal, some will say. We need to get back to the business of living, get back to our daily routines, don't let them see the fault lines just beneath the surface of our steely resolve. Don't let them see the cracks. Can you go to class-history, sociology or psychology-and not feel that each chapter of each text was written for such a time as this? Can you listen to "your song" and not weep for those who may never sing without tears again? Can you hurt someone-even accidentally-and take very many minutes before returning to say, "I'm sorry"? Suddenly, everything about our daily lives is stressing the fault lines. We'd all love to get back to normal, but it's shifted now, altered, almost split wide enough to swallow all we hold dear, all we believe in. Normal has changed, and will not stop changing anytime soon.

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(No Title) (#763)

No matter where their daddy was, they'd always known they could reach him on his cell phone. Hadn't he called four times in a row, Tuesday morning, before he never called again? "Can we call Daddy on his cell phone?" they asked their mommy, still believing. "No," she answered, and a new belief slowly dawned on their upturned faces. "There are no cell phones in heaven."

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(No Title) (#764)

"For what, when you went out into the wilderness, did you expect to see? A reed shaken by the wind?" (John the Baptist) For what, when you hunted down the innocent and the unsuspecting, did you expect to kill? Mere bodies, without spirits to cry out from the white dust of their deaths? Or mere flesh, whose souls were somehow unconnected to the very souls of the brothers and sisters they left behind? "There was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone...and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet--a vast army." (Ezekiel 37) Remember the prophets, and the Valley of Dry Bones, and wonder. For we are yet one people, one flesh, one mind. One breath.

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(No Title) (#765)

We'll always remember where we were. Please, dear God, let us also remember who we are.

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(No Title) (#766)

If you've never had a structural engineer or a foundation specialist inspect your newly-damp basement floor, and then tell you that you need a sump pump, count yourself among the innocents. A "sump pump" sounds like a lot of fun, doesn't it? Certainly, "pump" is a cheerful, enthusiastic word, whether when used as a verb or a noun. One pictures a little girl with long braids and plaid ribbons swinging up to the sky and back, pump, pump-unable to imagine in her most horrifying dreams that there is such a thing as sump. That said, if you're considering losing whatever remains of your sump pump virginity, take my advice: Don't. You can never go back.

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(No Title) (#767)

"Wait a minute," my husband says, "now you're putting words in my mouth..." "Oh, yeah?" I shoot back. "Well, you should be happy! I could have made your words a lot worse."

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(No Title) (#768)

We hear them singing loudly, raucously, purposefully, outside our door this morning. We wander out onto the porch, coffee cups in hand, trying to identify the source of the clamor, since from inside the house it sounded like an eighteen-wheeler whirring down our meandering road. "Isn't it amazing how full the trees still are at this time of year?" I ask, for in my mind, by the first of September, things should be starting to change. The beauty of the 100-year-old lush green oaks distracts me from our original mission. Suddenly, as if trees could hear, the leaves begin to fly away, first by twos, then by tens, and finally hundreds at a time, singing with all their hearts. The autumn has yet to begin, and already the fall is upon us.

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(No Title) (#769)

I'm starting to think that the Final Exam in "Successful Marriage" isn't really about finances, or in-laws or hormone replacement therapy, like they tell us. Shrinking retirement accounts and itty-bitty-bladder syndrome, we can get through. Male-patterned baldness won't kill us, even if it's mine. I'm starting to think "the test is in the nest." Being members of the "sandwich generation" used to frighten me. You know, the period in a middle-aged couple's life when their kids and their parents are all needy at the same time. But guess what happened while our independent moms neglected to need us? The kids moved out! The "big stuff" really has made us strong over the course of these past 25 years, but it's the "little stuff"-the little people-who've made us fun. We've got a few years left with our youngest son, and we won't be hurrying him from the nest before it's time. But we won't try to stop him when he's fit to fly, either. In the meantime, we've become returning students of each other, Doug and I. We're facing pop quizzes daily, examining the Teacher's text for insight into the coming chapters, and worrying just a little about the unavoidable essay questions. The semester may be just beginning, but we're determined to pass the Empty Nest Test-with "flying" colors.

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(No Title) (#770)

THINGS I'VE SAID THAT I HOPE OTHER PEOPLE WILL WISH THEY'D SAID: First in a Series "Under pressure, I don't do too well. Without pressure, I don't do too much."

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(No Title) (#771)

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" I ask of the eighteen-year-old girl standing in front of me. She and I go way back… way back. "I have no idea," she answers, as I squint to get a better look at her. Wait a minute… she's no young girl… what's happened to her? Could three entire decades have passed since I've seen her up close? I turn to escape her aging reflection, open the bathroom door, and run down the hall, dragging my backpack-on-wheels behind me. Breathless, I collapse in a front-row seat in "Introduction to Psychology." The professor stands there smiling, waiting for the other freshmen to take their seats, silent. I look around at all the eighteen-year-old faces, so like the one I expected to see in the mirror, their eyes shining with expectation. Do my eyes still shine? Before psych class even starts, I'm hearing voices. What in the world are you doing here? And what is the meaning of life?

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