When my husband and I were first married, I made him a fleece pillow covered in a pattern of moose and trees. This pillow is one of the ugliest things we own. I have tried at length to get rid of it. I have set it in the donation pile. I have set it in the trash pile. I have tried to suggest it reside in his office. All to no avail.

My husband recently made this statement in a sermon: “As Christians, we believe in an alien identity and an alien purpose. We believe that our identity and purpose come not from within, but from above.” These days, that kind of statement can be an unusual way to talk about identity!

Twenty years ago, a boy looked on me and I swooned.

Okay, it didn’t quite go like that. Instead, a boy looked on me, I looked skeptically back, we started discussing deep theological concepts and—bam—three years later we figured out we should be a couple. I started to swoon a year after we were married and I found out he thought I was pretty with bedhead and unbrushed teeth.

A few days ago, I was sitting at my desk returning various emails and updating various web-type things when my phone vibrated. I picked it up expecting a text from one of my children that they had forgotten their lunch or at the very least a text from a friend with a funny gif.

What do you do when your marriage has failed to make you happy?

In marriage there are moments of unhappiness—the sharp tongue of the moment, the inability to come to a rational conclusion together, the challenge to communicate so many life details as someone rushes off to work.

A few weeks ago, my first grader brought home a little book he had made in school. He was zealous to show it to me, reading the text for me himself as he turned the pages. It was filled with affirmation, but it was unique in that the text focused on growing rather than achieving.

My husband and I go running a few mornings a week. We don’t go far, but it’s a chance for fresh air and to watch the sunrise before kids and life and work happen for the day.

How many of us will sit around this Thanksgiving season and recite a small list of things we are thankful for?

In 1998, my husband and I bought a tent.

This tent spelled adventure with a capital A for us. We traveled everywhere with that tent–we hiked up and slid down the Indiana dunes, watched Missouri sunsets, swam in Kentucky lakes, cheered on baseball teams in Ohio, Colorado, and Michigan, ate unidentifiable foods in the deep South, and tucked into our -30 degree sleeping bags Up North at night.