SLEEP??? I scoff at sleep!!

I don't know how I end up being in these situations, but if I stay up past a certain time, I can't go to sleep. Tonight my friend Des and I had some great, much-needed talk time, but wouldn't you know it, she stuck around until 1 a.m., resulting in the above-mentioned phenomenon taking over my sleep depreived body. So here I am, shortly after 2, still wide awake. It's nights like these that make you want to move to a big city where your favorite pancake joint is open 24-7. Too bad I can't buck up the courage to drink warm milk. Somehow that has all the appeal of downing a big glass of...well, warm milk.

Covering the hurt

It snowed a little yesterday in Nashville. What a strange, but wonderful, way to start the morning. I was in chapel with my students at school, and we were praying for a family that had experienced enormous tragedy over the holidays. Outside, snow was gently falling, almost as if God was helping soften the blow of gut-wrenching sorrow.

Some people associate snow with drudgery, but when you grow up in the deep South, it takes on a wondrous, wide-eyed-child quality that you wish you could live with all the time. Journalism has made me cynical, teaching has made me tired, but the wonder of snow returns me to center.