11Apr 4, 2014
In the water, I see the sky, bluer than the feathers of a bluebird, dramatic with wide, radiant strokes of cloud. It’s enough to steal my breath. The water itself looks silver in the sunlight. Except when we move across the bridge, the lake and the floating dock are completely still. I settle into a […]
12Oct 4, 2013
Morning comes and we hear the sound of the ocean, the crash of waves. “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of that sound,” Kevin says, fresh from sleep. Almost all week, we’ve kept the door open to hear the sea, and I keep listening to the Spirit reminding me that the voice of […]
13May 24, 2013
Just home. The front door opens as we pull into the drive, as my friend and I unfold our legs and think toward dislodging my bags, my chair, the hat I wear on the beach. Our conversation hangs unfinished and that suits us fine. Conversations between true friends never really end anyway. We leave the […]
14Oct 19, 2012
It makes perfect sense to me that God brought me here, beside a clear, turquoise sea that shines like burnished silver, iridescent in the day’s dying light, to remind me to be available to Him. Every day, He asks me to be available, waiting, watching, surrendered. The doing remains His, the surrendering entirely mine. God gave us […]
15Jul 20, 2012
High tide, and the waves curl deep, pounding the sand into a cliff at the break line. I sit watching one shore break after another, absorbing powerful beauty, the explosion of white caps, hard and close. I would love these waves if they broke a little further out and I could ride them in fast […]
16Jul 13, 2012
Five o’clock on the beach, and the light falls soft and golden on our shoulders. It doesn’t escape me that on normal days, this hour finds me weary and pushing through, juggling homework and dinner and a thousand other things, counting the moments until I can sit down. Usually around five I can feel the […]
17Mar 30, 2012
We are not an easy family to love. I mean, even for us the loving isn’t always easy. We are difficult, tired, a ball of chaos with accessories. Everywhere we go, there are tote bags filled with an eccentric conglomeration of things—our accoutrements, I call them: stuffed monkeys and calculators; dry erase markers, insulin pens, […]
18Jan 6, 2012
Last week, Kevin and I went backpacking on the Appalachian Trail. I loved it. And I hated it. And now, days later, I still want to go back. Identity intrigues me, the way we allow the details of life to shape our perception of possibility; the way I have limited my own view of who […]
19Oct 28, 2011
Word to the wise: when you step off the airplane in Mexico, prepare to be deceived. The plane lands, and we share a conspiratorial smile, Kevin and me. It is the smile of sixteen years as best friends, our souls all blended together; the smile that travels all the way up to our eyes, glinting […]
20Apr 22, 2011
There are times, when if I had those red shoes, I’d smack the heels together until my feet hurt. The longing for home aches deep, a hunger that won’t go away. I’m not talking about the home I live in here that still stands (praise God) 100 feet—if that—from utter devastation. I’m talking about the […]