I crane my head toward the back seat, just as he unfolds one long leg and touches the parking lot pavement with the beaten black tip of a sandal. “Not too much, okay?” He laughs, flashing me that dashing smile, running two long fingers over his lips as if the expression has taken him by […]

“Mrs. Henegar?  Mrs. Henegar!”  She calls to me from a stroll away, two picnic tables over, where she balances a fat bag of trail mix on her palm. I turn to look and with one finger, she pushes her glasses up on her nose, then digs ’round in the sack again.  Her fingers disappear beneath […]

We rumble over bridges, wheels rolling across weathered slats, dappled shadows stretching.  Zoe takes the lead, crouching low, blonde hair flying behind her in ribbons.   Kevin trails her gently, restraining his pace just enough to let her go.  Somehow at first, I’m in the middle, sandwiched between these I love–two blazing, two simmering.  The path […]

I read the passage slowly, letting it float in the air between us, letting it settle: In the beginning the Word already existed.     The Word was with God,     and the Word was God. He existed in the beginning with God. God created everything through him,     and nothing was created except through him. The Word gave […]

The journal was a gift from my parents; the cover black, like pitch, like a blind dark day.  Butterflies explode from the corner, brilliant blue, buttery gold, every size, hundreds of them by surprise, overwhelming all that flat emptiness.  I run my fingers over the raised edges of their wings, feeling the fine lines, the […]

Walking and talking of heavy things, the churning, sputtering things that muck up a mind, I drop them like stones from my hands, leaving them discarded.  This is the one place I can toss out all the yuck without poisoning another soul, this winding road beneath trees that endlessly pour forth praise.  The wind carries […]

Clutching the mug–round, steaming, creamy-warm, in the snug space between twinkle lights and the gentle glow of dawn, I push back my chair, leaving the porch with its weathered slats and plump, happy cushions.  The house feels still, dark, lightly chilled from the brisk morning.  Just past a silhoutted wave to father and daughter on […]

Out of the corner of my eye, I see them kneeling in front of my son, knees pressed hard into the floor right there in front of the chair where Adam sits waiting for me, glancing at his watch.  I’m too far away to hear them, but I can tell that they’re talking to him, […]

It’s an old, familiar, childhood question.  If you had just one wish, and you knew it would come true… It’s a genie question, hovering in smoke, the answer thought-whispered over snuffed out candles, wispy and curling.  Just once, it was a question of Biblical proportions, only God posed it differently, to a young king:  Ask […]

To look at her, you’d not think her mighty, carrying that slice of notebook paper folded over her fingers, brassy hair tied in two smooth knots and pinned, finally, against her head and away from her face.  She insists upon nothing in her eyes when she’s about her business, checking off important things in a […]