On the field, a tangle of feet, tennis shoes slick with wet, flat grass, green-smeared on Converse white.  Some of the kids sprint, others twist and skitter, like wind-blown seeds.  It’s a game, a favorite: the prey try to make it across the field to grab up a bit of foam “food” in their fists, one […]

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 […]

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 […]

We walk across a plank bridge, our feet thickly thumping, and a thin brown leaf drifts from the overhead canopy and twists down down in the breeze, grazing my arm.   In tiny, hidden places, anticipated Autumn begins to set the woods on fire, just barely.  We pause to admire a smoldering swatch of delicate […]

Home and kids settled, I run upstairs and slip on my walking shoes, tugging at the laces.  Sometimes the only thing I know is that I need God.  I slip my keys and my phone in my pocket and promise to be back soon, and I move, carrying water, heavy in one hand.  I’m thirsty, […]

Since I got home, I’ve been trying to see with my ocean eyes–the ones scrubbed, rubbed and salt-glazed like old viridian sea glass, but everywhere I look, something is out of place. In the morning after breakfast, I sweep, my fingers still rubbery and root-shriveled from the dish water.  Sometimes the receding tide carves lines […]