Anne has signed on with Relevant Magazine to be a columnist in their “God” section every other Tuesday. We will also post a link here after the column is up over on their site.
Those Things That Will Not Ever Leave is Anne’s inaugural column. Below is an excerpt and link.
The big blue house on Indian Lake Trail was for sale.
Five bedrooms, a perfect view of the west shores of Lake Michigan and an open living area full of furniture from a 2007 Restoration Hardware catalog weren’t enough to hold together the bonds of holy matrimony. While the unhappy couple waited for the three-story home to sell, they rented it out to my friend.
It’s Wednesday evening, and the sun is slowly turning the sky the color of a mimosa. I drove two hours north from my own blue house to visit my friend and his family, spending half a day clumsily paddling the White River in a flimsy orange kayak and achieving a splotchy sunburn my friend’s daughter—who is sitting next to me as I write—comments on by saying, “Whoa. That looks weird.”
For three months last year, I lived in California, only a few miles from the beach. As I walk down the beach barefoot in Michigan on this Wednesday, the way the sand falls into the crevices between my toes reminds me of my beach crawls on the West Coast, each minuscule grain smoothed by centuries of water, slowly and inefficiently.
The waves are pulled from the middle of the water, seemingly created from nothing and growing as they roll toward my feet. They are loud and threatening, hissing as if to pull me back with them, only to acquiesce by the time they hit my ankles and create a …..