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Training the Ear of My Heart

By Elizabeth DuffyMarch 27, 2018

I don’t live a very active life, though observers might deduce that I am always late, leaping over railroad tracks in my early millennium Honda pilot to get to a pickup before my kids notice my absence. It benefits me to preserve the appearance of a harried, overbooked mother of a large family, because it…

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Suffering and Ash Wednesday

By Elizabeth DuffyFebruary 14, 2018

Suffering is the most dissociative word in the Christian lexicon. Raised Catholic, I was taught to “offer up” my suffering for the salvation of a soul in purgatory. The sooner I embraced my suffering, which meant releasing or suppressing it, the sooner suffering would turn to joy. Joy was the preferred endgame, and it was…

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Homecomings

By Elizabeth DuffyOctober 4, 2017

Last night I sat on the curb with my three youngest children, while my three eldest walked in the homecoming parade. My paraders each represented a different sport in their team jerseys and class colors. They walked in leagues of friends, shoulder to proud shoulder, sharing the inside jokes of those in the social center,…

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The Spirit’s Indwelling

By Elizabeth DuffySeptember 19, 2017

Beside me this morning is a child at the breakfast table vigorously chewing a Fuji apple and explaining to me the mutative abilities of a small vehicle based on the particular placement of a certain Lego brick. Sometimes the vehicle is a plow, sometimes a combine, depending on whether that brick is before it, behind…

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Movements of the Lord

By Elizabeth DuffyJune 6, 2017

I got up very early this morning to clean up dog diarrhea, and my husband was finally home from a week of travel for work, so I slipped out for a walk to what used to be the brick house. The brick house was a house just like ours, perched on a higher hill with…

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Wrestling

By Elizabeth DuffyFebruary 2, 2017

My son who is autistic wrestles in high school because he doesn’t mind pain. My other kids would cry when they stubbed their toes playing in the yard, but this son of mine, more than once came to me with gaping wounds needing stitches and hardly a tear in his eye. Now he has a…

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Image’s 16 Most-Read of 2016

By ImageJanuary 18, 2017

As I was looking over Image’s website analytics at the end of 2016, I confess that I was overcome with affection and gratitude for you, our online readers. Your attention has painted a picture, and it is a significantly different picture than many other outlets show. The New Yorker, for example, introduced their most-reads thus: “Americans, as…

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There Is No Free Breakfast

By Elizabeth DuffyJanuary 5, 2017

When I joined the gym, I was given two free personal training sessions to help “jump-start” my fitness routine. Almost every gym I’ve joined came with such a pass, but I never used them, because I used to coach cross country track, for goodness’ sake. I thought I knew how to exercise. Six babies later…

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Stiff Necked Church Lady

By Elizabeth DuffyNovember 15, 2016

Church Ladies. Most of them are pretty darn good souls. They’re at the church every day, bent over pews, cleaning the sanctuary, baking pies, and keeping all the committees peopled. They’re also gorgeously individual souls with their own private concerns, loves, and extracurricular interests. But everyone’s probably known at least one church lady like the…

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Glorying in Flawless Skin and God’s Love

By Elizabeth DuffyOctober 24, 2016

Driving in the car recently, my daughter pulled down the visor in front of her and opened the mirror. Her hair was in a side ponytail draped over her right shoulder. She wore a black and white plaid beret. “I really like this hat and hair thing I have going on today.” “Yes, very cute,”…

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