It’s time to leave, so I stand at the bottom of the stairs and call to my son.  I hear his music, the fullness in the air that always colors the rooms where he moves, the strains of worship that make our living rich.  His feet thump against the carpet in an unseen stretch of […]

I walk into the kitchen from the garage, carrying an armful of things—a bag, a few books, a coffee mug someone left behind—on my way to distribute these and consider the afternoon climb, and one of my daughters presses into me, draping the now dangling legs, grasping me solid, clinging to me with now enfolding […]

Tuesday, and clouds thickly shroud the sky, as though in acknowledgement of this bitterly-savored day, this day when we hold remembrance on our tongues and feel it in our throats.  It was God’s hatred for death that made it something He conquered, because He couldn’t stand to have us ripped away and apart forever. Indeed, […]

Saturday night, and the descent happens just this quickly: We sit around the table licking frosting from our fingers, when she finally lifts her cupcake in one flattened palm, admiring the shape of it from all sides.  She has her own way—her own “technique,” she says—for savoring food.  When it comes to cupcakes, she tastes […]

Sometimes from the start of a day a dull ache builds, spreading slowly from the curve of my back well into the sharp edges of my shoulders.  It is the sore feel of self dying, the good ache of need, the one meant to remind me that God accomplishes and satisfies (Deuteronomy 8:3).  But the truth […]

I start our dinner in the morning so that the smell of simmering will bring warmth to the house all day.  This is also my preemptive strategy to avoid that moment in the weary hours when cooking no longer feels like an art and I murmur there’s still supper, forgetting the ever-constant whisper of the Spirit urging […]

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 […]

On the way home from school, we ramble down a country road sandwiched between two busy thoroughfares. We leave the highway still feeling jostled by the cars and trucks that whizzed past while we waited to turn and wander down just this little stretch of peace before we turn again into the chaos.  I always smile […]

Today, this encouragement: Write it down. In her lap, a piece of notebook paper sits folded, pressed beneath her hands.  She picks it up, fingering the edges and the corner, where the paper turns up like a curling wave. From across the room, I can see the faint blue ruling, the holes at the edges, […]

Rigidity is a Spectrum curve, one we’ve worn to a polish, fast slipping our way through so often that we know the feel of it by heart.  After all, we’ve got not one track here, but two, and even though the trajectories spin differently, that particular curve is common to both. Something starts fresh, like […]