Moments in the Mist

There are no pretty-good sentences. They are either perfect or incredibly awful. Silence filled the dark stillness with a frigid air that bit my skin, and I shivered despite the weighty cloak I bore. Icy sweat trickled down my back as I struggled to breathe. Can you tell which of those sentences is perfect and which is incredibly awful? You may be able to guess. But you won't be able to know in the way that I know. I can tell you are simply quaking with anticipation, so I will tell you which sentence is which, and I will do my best to explain why. The first sentence is perfect because the room was silent, because the room wasn't full of emptiness but of silence, and because the room was terribly dark, and terribly still. The air was frigid, and it was the silence that filled the room with the frigid air. The air didn't brush my skin, and it didn't tickle my skin. It bit my skin. The cloak I wore wasn't heavy, but it was weighty. In fact, I didn't wear it...

When I finished reading the last page of Heidi , I stood up and stretched, bumping my head against the plastic red slide. I stepped into the sunlight, shading my eyes with my hand. I squinted, searching for my classmates. Older children from the third grade dominated the playground, as usual, and most of them were chasing or being chased. I didn’t see my teacher, but I could spot Frank, a quiet boy from my class. If he was still playing, that meant my class hadn’t climbed the hill back to school yet. I walked in circles, kicking bark chips and looking for my friends. Sweat dripped down my neck and I started breathing faster. I didn’t want to ask Frank where everyone had gone. But as the minutes crawled by, I knew that was my only option. I considered approaching a teacher I didn’t know, but the pit in my gut told me that I couldn’t betray Mrs. Welbourne by asking another teacher for help. Finally, I tapped Frank on the shoulder. He whipped around, and my heart stopped beating. Alth...

We mounted him in the corner, above the desk, and next to the window. His eyes reflected the glare of the bare light bulb in the center of the bedroom, and his antlers almost scraped the ceiling. We hung Christmas ornaments on them to make him look friendlier, the silver snowflake that frames the photo of my cousin and me, the gold rock hold that Jake won in a climbing competition, and the big red ball that reads Mr. & Mrs. Est. 2019. Sometimes I wonder if he likes being in the corner. Does he feel cozy or trapped? Does he like his view into the backyard, or does he feel exposed? There is a decorative sign near him that reads the best is yet to come. Does he think the message applies to him? Do the words bring him hope or isolation? We didn’t give him a name because Jake says he wants to let our children name him. He says they can each give him a name, and we’ll hyphenate them. We’re not sure how many names he’ll have. Of course by time the kids are with us, we won’...

Or, more importantly, who will read this later? Probably my professor and my writing class. When I write an article for The Crescent, George Fox students, faculty, and staff might read it. When I write an email, I know exactly who will (hopefully) read it. When I write short stories, I usually have no idea who will read them. When I wrote the first drafts of the short stories I am most proud of now, I never considered my audience. I wrote for myself. I wrote to know myself better, and I wrote to know others better. I wrote to pick through pain. I pulled memories apart, scattered them, and kept some bits for later. I collected favorite thoughts and stretched them as long as I could without snapping them. Whenever I considered showing my stories to others, I struggled. I didn’t make enough sense, I thought, for others to understand. For years, my teachers were the only ones to see my work. When one of them challenged me to share my writing with my peers, I learned how to revise fo...

On a rainy first-grade morning, I had a doctor's appointment and I got to skip the first few hours of the school day. I felt a bit naughty as it was my first time missing school for any reason. Maybe, I thought, I will arrive after writing time and in time for recess. I bounced into the classroom, pigtails swinging, only to realize that my teacher was passing out the writing paper. I sighed and took my seat. The writing paper we used was blank on top and lined on the bottom. They were the really big lines marked with dotted lines in the middle meant for handwriting practice. There were probably four lines in total on the page, leaving room for a picture in the blank space. Just looking at the page made me nauseous. I wrote the letters as slowly and arduously as possible, so as not to have to complete a second page. One third-grade Tuesday, my teacher asked my class to lean into an important moment and write about it. I chose to describe a past injury in great detail. My teacher ...

Ecclesiastes 1:2 Life is fleeting, like a passing mist. It is like trying to catch hold of a breath. Hevel. Vapor. Mist. This is the word the author of Ecclesiastes chose to describe life. Life for himself? Life for humanity? Life for all things living? He doesn’t specify. A New Testament author uses a similar word in Greek to describe the lives of his readers. “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes,” he writes in James 4:14. Normally, I read the Bible with my fuzzy gray blanket wrapped tightly around me, keeping the words at a distance. These verses, though, penetrated the gray fuzz. I found them comforting. I don’t have to craft my life into a perfect sculpture for the keepers of eternity to criticize or place value on. I’m just here for now, and then I will be gone. If I am like most people, I will be easily forgotten. The stakes, then, aren’t as high as everyone says. The transience of life as mist mist brings ...