In the picture my friend sends me, Adam leaps, his long legs artfully bent, his face passionately focused. I imagine a crescendo, a bold, sweeping musical phrase building in Adam’s heart, exploding through his body. My son is a dancer. I am someone who dances for joy, often in worship, often poorly, laughing because I […]

Into the thin of night, during those turbulent hours when panic threatens the best of our rest; during those hours when the conversations of young friends become so exposed that with raw, sleepy voices they begin to truly know each other; during those hours when so many souls bound for home finally drift away; into […]

Kevin and I set out for our walk in the early morning, while the air is crisp and new light glows soft pink. We smile over the volume of the birds, how they chitter and squaw from fence post to power lines to the peaks of the trees, sentinels passing messages. We gesture and smile, […]

Early, while the sky’s still grey, Riley comes downstairs, slowly, like always. From my chair in the living room, from the place where I sit still dark and curled, I can hear the fall of her feet. Her knees crack, an inherited weakness, as she plants herself on each step, and for a moment I […]

When we arrive, the rustic man from whom we rented the cabin waits, rising to lumber out to the door. His eyes are blue, cool and vibrant like the snatch of sky I glimpse above the mountains. In some ways, he is those mountains, sloped and capped in silver cloud, monochrome and rumpled in the […]

“I met a new friend today,” Riley says, and it’s the first thing she wants to tell me about her first day back at school, the first thing she gushes, beaming as she walks through the door and out of the thick August afternoon heat. “Oh yea?” “Mmmhmm,” she singsongs, dropping her book bag into […]

I end my call, and putting down my phone, I tell them bluntly (might as well get it over with): “Friday, you have a dental appointment.” Admittedly, it feels odd to say the word appointment again, especially with my mind full of new protocols–masks and me waiting in the car and everyone’s temperature checked upon […]

Walking down the Winter road, everything the color of bone, you could miss all your new beginnings. Faster, faster. Even the street seems like a challenge to hurry, the landscape like a warning. Time is running out. The bare trees reach, branches like skeletal fingers, like venous tributaries invisibly leaking life into thin air, like […]

The young man meets us in the parking lot, at the spaces reserved for guests. Before we can get out of the car, he’s walking purposefully our way, wearing a t-shirt that says, Welcome. And so it should be with God’s people, always wearing the welcome of Christ, always walking purposefully toward opportunities to love. […]

We stand in a huddled line, breath like mist in the frosty cold, our hands stuffed in our pockets. Seven minutes until the DMV opens, and we wait like a semi-orderly herd of sleepy sheep staring expectantly at a storefront door. “If we had a YouTube channel, this would be the episode to watch,” I […]