“I think I know you,” I say, fumbling only a little because I don’t know if she’ll remember me at first, because the last time I saw her, we stood in worship singing blessings over each other. It was dark; we were masked, but I recognized her that night even though I didn’t know her […]

I scan the bustling auditorium for Riley and Adam and immediately find them, my two opposite kids, naturally sitting on opposite sides of the room. Adam looks back at me from a lonely spot on the second row and grins, his gaze both an acknowledgment and an assessment. He’s good, but do I need anything? […]

I joke and call myself a hoop jumper, me with my hair flying wild around my face and my exercise clothes still on from before carpool; me with a pen in one hand, and a mess of papers stretched across the desk in indistinguishable stacks, some paper-clipped, some loose and, as Kevin would say, “flapping […]

Some say these are dark times. Winter breathes frosty paralysis in beautiful, sparkling gusts, and, especially because of the bare chill, the cloud-blanketed skies, I want to stay inside. And yet, this time of year, I feel starved for light. I hang strings of white bulbs, twinkling, in every room. I flick on all the […]

The kitchen smells savory-rich, of comfort and warmth and vacation, of salty, sizzling bacon, slowly melting butter, and just lightly, of syrup. This morning, we cook up breakfast sandwiches assembly-line style, sipping coffee and talking, our voices rising and falling among the clatter of plates and pans. Here and there, a chuckle, a yawn, a […]

Over coffee, Zoe tells us, lacing her fingers through the mug, how she plans to ask her sister to share a movie night, maybe go get snacks before. Zoe slips out to make her invitation, leaves me smiling the way we mamas do when our children love each other; leaves me thinking about how somewhere […]

On the screen, a dozen boxes, a dozen tiny windows into lives and homes, begin to stack like bricks placed by an invisible hand. You can see me, with my bad posture and my tired eyes, a blinking stone already added to a living, breathing, growing thing. Zooming (Have we already verbed that word?) feels […]

Sometimes all I can see is what hurts, what’s hard, what I wish could be different. Before we even leave our driveway, Riley stops, setting her water bottle down, handing me the paper, her pen. She lifts her sunglasses, peers more closely at her phone. “It says license plate, so…” She talks to herself more […]

Blooms litter the street, floating down from the pear and cherry trees like flat fairy carpets, like petals tossed to soften the footfall of a bride. I feel out of place here in my tennis shoes, but am I? I glance at the sky–cloudless, blue like the sapphire sea around God’s throne. Everywhere, the Holy […]

We crowd around the table–the casual, marked up table with the glitter from Zoe’s elementary school project melted into the finish, the one so in need of a renewal our paper plates have begun to stick. I’ve talked about refinishing it, imagining the dust thrown off with vigorous sanding, the feel of that gritty paper […]