Tanara McCauley

Culturally Imagined Stories

Tag: purpose

  • Beautiful

    A woman had a dream. She walked for miles through fields and deserts, grasslands and marshes, following the sun. It warmed her face and shined in her eyes, making her squint as she journeyed. She pushed aside tall stalks of wheat, trudged through wet sand. Her thighs strained up steep mountainsides. In every place the […]

  • The Cookie Jar

    “A cookie jar, though beautiful, will always disappoint if found empty.” My cookie jar is empty. It’s seen a batch or two–maybe–in the months since I returned home from Mount Hermon’s Christian Writers Conference; but for the most part it’s been unoccupied. Relieved of duty. Free of tenants. And for a while I blamed my […]

  • When the Odd Bird Flies

    Odd bird. It’s an expression my family uses for something or someone who strikes us as unusual. The context can be positive, such as a quirky or endearing oddity; or it can be of the don’t-make-eye-contact variety. A bird of the former type attends my daughter’s gymnastics school. She’s tall and pale, all angles and […]

  • Risky Embrace

    I saved a life today. Not intentionally, and not of the most precious variety, but a valuable life all the same: that of a fat, feisty lizard. He lives in my backyard. And our relationship is…uh…complicated. (A vague adjective, missing all the negative connotations applicable to our feeble ties, but I’ll go with it.) See, I […]

  • Walk it Out

    El interés tiene pies. It’s a Spanish phrase that often comes back to haunt me when I find myself making excuses not to do something. The literal translation? Interest has feet. “Who has What?!?” you ask. Stay with me, the meaning is a bit more profound. Many of us have approached a prospect or task […]

  • Dare to Live the Dream

    Every dream has a starting point. My love of reading, and the eventual desire to write, began in the pages of two childhood classics. Where the Red Fern Grows is the first book to ever make me weep. Not cry. Weep. Hysterically. As if my house had just gone up in flames and every family […]

  • Authors and Agents and Editors…Oh My!

    I’m going to keep this short. Because I’m supposed to be spending this week just enjoying my family, resting up, and . The girl in the picture has the view I’m missing, but at least I keep a steaming hot cup of luxury on my reading table. So I’m good. Now back to the update […]