She’s such a shining, starlit soul. She walks through the kitchen, where I gently lift lettuce leaves with my fingers, sorting the torn pieces into salad bowls. “Mom, what’s that?” She says, with a casual turn of her hand, a subtle gesture toward the line of butter yellow bowls. I know she doesn’t really mean, […]

Before the light splits apart the sky or steals soft through the clouds, revealing their lines, the only sound we hear is birdsong. I fold my legs up in the chair, drawing near to God, and it’s as though He wraps around me and breathes, Listen.  In the darkness, hidden from view, the birds sing […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Maybe—when I capture it here in flat black letters and solid lines, when I carefully trap the moments still within the boundaries of words—it will not appear as romantic as it really is to me: the two of us, finally side by side again at the end of the day. But then, the true value […]

Well okay, not just the holidays.  I can’t ignore the resounding, soul-altering Comment:  This is not just for now. We linger, just souls pouring, and in those moments, walls fall.  The thunderous quake, the crashing of ugly pretense pushed down, is something I feel, something that shakes Heaven maybe, while here, our voices softly offer […]