Author: haley montgomery

May 24, 2026 essays Post a Comment

Sunday morning

Sunday mornings are quiet. That’s my favorite part. They are quiet and still. Time feels free. Like I’m not trading it for anything else. That this moment is here just for this moment. To be. And I alone can choose how to fill it. Sunday morning.

In those first moments of waking up, when I haven’t decided if I’m ready to open my eyes, I remind myself that it’s Sunday morning. That I don’t have to go anywhere. Sometime deep in the night during one of the frequent times I typically wake up, I decided to opt out of an event I had planned to attend later today. A good thing that will happen at 5 o’clock. But not a “best” thing for me today. There is always a wrestling with those types of decisions, and to say no feels like a battle at times. Like there’s a permission only I can grant. If I’m willing.

So, this Sunday morning feels quieter. Knowing there are no commitments today. No places to be. That there is a waking and a retiring, with only my choices in between. The only noise in the house is the sound of my own thoughts. I whisper out loud to break the cycle in my mind. “It’s ok to rest. Everything else will be fine.” And I decide to get up.

Tshirt from yesterday. Shoes that let me walk in the grass. Baseball cap bearing the words “defy gravity.” Moisturizer. A spray. I don’t know what it’s called, but this one smells good. Chap stick.

When I open my bedroom door, the puppy whines. She’s been waiting. Half asleep herself corralled in her crate. Do I want hot or iced coffee? 

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May 17, 2026 beautiful ordinary Post a Comment

Moment from the Couch

candle beside a vase of flowers
 
I was staring at the flame. The light of a single candle wick flickering and glistening against the etched glass. Air moving from the ceiling fan produced a gentle movement of the light, and I could see the details of the pattern covering the glass when the light moved across it. I made myself take a deep breath, an inhale to fill my lungs completely and l let it out slowly while I closed my eyes.
 
I had been reading something about how the brain works and a brief description of how it absorbs positive experiences. How it imprints them into our memories and catalog of life to train itself for future responses to stimuli. It’s much slower with positive, happy things than it is with whatever is hard. Something in the evolutionary process of growing and time and the struggles of living wires our brains to be on alert and more quickly absorb negative experiences or challenges, incorporating them into the map of our responses as self-protection or survival. Not so with what we identify as happy. That takes more work.
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April 26, 2026 widow's tale

Sort of a Poem: I Carry the Grief in my Bones

I carry the grief in my bones.
Or in the stuff of life that brings together my body and mind.
In the involuntary part of being like breathing or heart beating or blinking or inhaling.
I don’t notice my heart or even may breathing until I run up the stairs too fast and I’m aware of the beat or think about pacing the exhale with the inhale.

I carry the grief there.
Where it only occasionally intrudes.
Where I don’t notice it.
But my body knows.
When the memory stirs somewhere deep and lost in my mind and my body sends the reminders before my spirit even knows.
I’m tired.
My sleep is restless.
My thoughts scattered, as if crowded by some unknown uncertainty or wrestling to be mastered.
A sadness manifested in tangible ways – if only designed to slow me down.
To tug at me to remember.
That the body knows.
And rest is ok. Patience is ok.
Listening is ok. Taking the time is ok.
The time to experience my own thoughts and unknowns.
And to heal bit by bit.
I carry the grief in my bones.

December 27, 2025 reading log, widow's tale

Recklessness and The Barbarian Way

Am I running away from myself? That’s the question I started to ask when I finished The Barbarian Way, a short read from Erwin McManus. I have read a couple of other books by the founder of Mosaic Church, and I picked this one up somewhere along the way. It’s been sitting on my shelf, and I finally decided to check it out during our Christmas break.

The holiday break was sixteen days, and now, the day after Christmas, I’m down to ten. I know this because I’ve been marking time. I set aside the break to ask questions of God, to search for His truth after a particularly hard season. A hard year. Sixteen days. Just over two weeks. Amid holiday festivities and traditions, I asked myself… Is two weeks enough time to hear, to understand, to make a change? Because my heart is ready for change. I want peace. A deep and abiding peace that transcends fear and the specter of loss. I want purpose. A clear and present purpose that brings order to my steps and infuses my days with hope and joy.

And so, as most divine interventions are, The Barbarian Way seemed to come at an appointed time.

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November 21, 2025 stories

Mama

Several weeks ago as I began to sense that my Mom’s time here was coming nearer to an end, I started to think about how I would describe her after she died. In moments between pushing the thoughts aside and embracing the inevitability of the situation, I began to try and settle my heart on the things that were important about her life.
 
In the last several years of Mama’s life, she became more isolated as she cared for Dad, and then began to lose the ability to get out and interact with people as she once did. So as I thought about honoring her memory, I knew that perhaps the most meaningful accounting of her life would come from me. I didn’t know if I could find the words, and I didn’t know if I could share them with the appropriate clarity and composure. But, here I am. And here you are. And she is not here.
 
She is in a more vibrant place than I have ever known, beyond the constraints of this world. And I come to this moment with the stories of what she has meant to us. Stories of love and faithfulness and saying goodbye.
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