Jennifer’s Reviews > Yesteryear > Status Update

…as it turns out, the place where your life ends is exactly where mine begins: the moment when I saw the world and wanted every part of it

What were good Christian men if not experts at making their good Christian women vanish from the world?

I shared agreement between women to insist back-and-forth and endless conversation that this thing we spent our whole life preparing for – this thing we were born for – is anywhere close to what we thought it would be and do you know the truth behind that secret? The water beneath the ice? It never stops you never age out of it. Your mother lies to you, and then you lie to your children…

It really is funny to think of how I all, but begged Caleb, in our early years of marriage, to become the kind of man who is standing before me now. The opposite of a kindergarten teacher. A farmer. A cowboy. A patriarch. A man without a single soft edge.

“ my fury circled back around, and it felt, suddenly, like I was eating myself alive.”

Evening. Wake baby from nap. Change diaper. Breast-feed. Breast-feed. Breast-feed. Close eyes and count to 10 over the sound of babies sudden, and inexplicable whales. Swallow very strong instinct to slap the baby.… Consider shaking baby. Resisted to shake baby. Strap baby to chest.

He could be perfect for politics someday… It’s actually one of the few positions of power where it benefits you to unthink. If you don’t think too hard, you never get rattled.

There comes a point in every marriage when a woman realizes that the man she married is a freak. This is inevitable. It cannot be avoided. The only real question in the matter is what type of freak your husband will be-

My eldest daughter was like me, not just in likeness, but in disposition, too: she held her intelligence like a knife behind her back. Now that she was creeping toward womanhood, I found our similarity is a bit unnerving. Like watching a clone of myself walk slowly toward me from a faraway point in the distance: what would happen when she arrived?