At the chiropractor’s office, we take up the whole row of cervical traction units against the wall—Riley, Adam, Zoe, me.  We all know the routine.  We slip the padded bars behind our heads, rest our chins on the thick foam in front, grip the ends of the chin bars with our hands.  Riley and Adam […]

Early morning and Lights twinkle, the Advent candles burn their persistant hope, and in the kitchen I stand still, watching my daughter pause over her pricked finger and the blood rounding into a bubble at the tip.  I know she’s crying by the way she catches her breath, the slope of her back, the angle […]

My son digs the bills out of his left pocket, spreading them flat on his thigh.  He smiles–a small, delighted surrender, preparing for the giving. And somewhere long past—somewhere God can still see unfolding right with our present, a woman’s feet stir the dust as she walks purposefully toward Temple. Lightly, she walks across the […]

Shine the light bright, just there. Tuesday night and we restlessly weave our way through the double doors, a slowly meandering people-river, a jumble of fabric and purses and shoes.  We move patiently, craning our necks, and the sound of us ebbs and flows—the voices, the walking, the slide of our clothes.  A security guard […]

The truth is, our living is messy. It isn’t the carefully selected photos we share on Facebook. In the flurry of morning readying, I reach into the cabinet for a cereal bowl. A red-brown something has dried over the blue and purple flowers, and something tiny green and branching like a tree—something resembling a flattened […]

On the bar in the kitchen, I find a scrap of paper she has forgotten.  The blocked letters and lines and paragraphs seem too serious for her, too stark.  Name: _______________________________ Title/Description for yourself (something you would naturally say to introduce yourself): _______________________________.  Her handwriting softens the lines, beautiful, plain, easy.  Riley.  Peace. I lay […]

“1,2,3…Okay, Mom—I’m going to count how many people signed my yearbook.  Let’s see how many I have.” And she begins again, confident that she has my attention.  “Let’s see, I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8…and here I have 9, 10, 11, 12,”she says, counting the ones who wrote words and the […]

Sometimes my hurry seeps into the most precious places. Sometimes I carry it into eternal spaces, into my living resurrected, into holy things not made for hurry.  Hurry is a temporal symptom.  It is a physical distraction.  Hurry is born of all that passes away. With a sigh, we lay our hands gently against our […]

I bring my children home in the afternoon, as the sun beats hot on the pavement, and the one talks so quickly the words stick to each other as they pass through her lips.   She has stories and I was like and then questions and what are we and then she fills in the space by […]

Just as the morning becomes, we run together beneath the sun.  A light breeze wraps our shoulders.  I glance up at the sky—blue, the color rich like Morpho wings, with wisps of sea foam cloud.  I stare hard, gasping.  Day after day, the heavens pour forth speech.  “They have no speech, they use no words; […]