About Me

When I was little, we moved all over rural Ohio and story was my most consistent friend. No matter where we landed or what we had, I could always imagine a delightful story.

Matchbox cars zooming along orange tracks raced for redemption and honor. My dolls and stuffed animals engaged in riveting tea party dialogue. Getting lost in the woods transported my brother and me to magical lands. Climbing trees was for spying or joining flocks of migrating birds. Apple trees served as bell towers for perching with books and eating sweet snacks (and also getting stuck and needing Dad to rescue me).

When I wasn’t imagining stories, I was dancing and singing songs to cassette tapes and car karaoke. As I got older, I frequented concerts and music festivals with friends.

Lyric jackets were one of my favorite treasures from those good ‘ole days. When I wasn’t poring over lyrics and books, I was reading magazines. ANY magazine would do. I gobbled up print media and all of its messy pop culture fascination.

Every art of storytelling was my favorite through high school. Choir, show choir, drama, musicals, art classes, dance and color guard. I did it all and it was pure, expressive joy!

My gap year between high school and college is when I started serving in youth ministry and I have found a way to be involved with youth ever since. I began college in Spokane, Washington and helped start a little literary journal that year. While in the PNW I lived in a youth outreach ministry house in the middle of broken and weary neighborhood. My church friends and I served meals to the homeless regularly and I worked almost full time at a home for people with mental differences. My empathy muscles grew exponentially that year.

I continued college in Chicago and fell in love with the city. There is no place like it! Festivals and music and people! Goodness, the people. What a privilege it was to meet so many people in all of the unique neighborhoods and outreaches. For two years I also tutored children through an immigrant services non-profit and was honored to get to know people with unfathomable fortitude in life.

In school I continued telling stories by writing for the Alumni Association and had an absolute blast on the improv comedy team. Thanks to our program director’s support, I also got our campus newspaper online with a custom site and later served as a staff writer for the Features section. I loved writing about fellow students, books, local plays, and Chicago hideaways.

Print Media was my emphasis when I entered my studies of Communications. But since, and this hurts me to write, print media was already dying, the major collapsed into Communications in general. What an unexpected gift that was as I had the privilege of rubbing shoulders with and learning from the most gifted and expressive storytellers in disciplines spilling far beyond the confines of writing.

My wayfaring ways eventually brought me to Texas, where I now reside with my husband and three daughters. We are grateful to be in a local church committed to faithfulness to God’s story in the community around us. And I spend my days sharing the joys of creativity and loving people well with my children. I write in them margin times. As ever, story is the constant in my days.

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