In the afternoon, we walk, and Riley’s normal sunshine has turned to storm, silent, brooding thick like the blanketing clouds of winter. I have stopped glancing toward her, because when I do, she glances away; and I’ve stopped asking, because my questions make her dissolve into embarrassed grief. Unintentionally, I’ve taught her that sadness has […]

Into the night and our deep sleep comes the blare of an alarm. History repeats.  Emergency emergency wake up wake up, the alarm screams, and cartoon me jumps up and runs immediately into the wall, while the real not-yet-lucid me picks up my phone, swings my legs over the side of the bed, and pulls […]

Henry Blackaby, in his powerful study Experiencing God, taught me the life-changing difference between joining God where he already works and asking him to work according to my plans.  “We don’t choose what we will do for God,” Blackaby said.  “He invites us to join Him where He wants to involve us.” Riley has shown […]

At the end of the day, while the lights still twinkle in the living room, I crawl into bed and sigh. Few moments feel as satisfying as this one. If energy sparkles in jars—we have this treasure in jars of clay, I’m still radiant, even if I feel as though I have turned up empty. […]

Riley can’t respond to me when she’s seizing. She can’t answer my gentle pleas for her to come back, though she tries to turn her head toward me and gets locked there, looking back over her left shoulder, eyes seeing nowhere and then straining beyond even me. I glance at the clock, marking the time, […]

Mirrors lie, Amor Towles wrote in A Gentleman in Moscow.  I had to grab a pen and write the quote in my journal because it rang true, because I had heard those lies for most of my life.  I remember it now, away from home, as I walk through a glassy, windowed hallway and catch […]

When Riley cries, she turns red, as though her whole body must make up for any failure to express herself clearly in words. This morning as we walk to the car, her eyes, which were already rimmed an angry color, look pink from the press of her palms as she rubs away her tears. The […]

The most effective training is hard. That’s what I tell myself as, on the exhale, I blow away the stray hairs that have slipped from my ponytail. Every other morning, I groan through a series of exercises meant to strengthen my core, which feels important to me as more and more natural “fairy hair” appears […]

Spiritual formation is renovation of the soul. That’s what I’m thinking as I empty the drawers of an old desk into a tote, as I shake my head over the accumulation of the years. In the deepest drawer, I find a knot of cords, and I smile, thinking this is how my thoughts would look […]

“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 […]