“You’re a healer,” one of my friends says to another, as we sit encircling, an invisible linking of arms. What an absolutely lovely, gracious gift, to heal, and as spiritual gifts are given by God for the blessing of others, I see that my sister lives as a healer for me. I sit in our […]

In the hospital, the hiring manager for patient services has been telling Riley about a job serving meals to the hurting, the sick. “No one wants to be in a hospital,” he explains to her in his office, “and so sometimes the patients won’t be very kind to you or happy to see you.  They […]

It’s predictable, really, that I should be standing over a pile of laundry, smoothing out the cracked vinyl teeth of a monstrous snake-dragon-dinosaur style beast with my fingers, folding Adam’s favorite t-shirt, flashy with the logo of the Loch Ness Monster roller coaster, when it comes to me that generally my view of things is […]

Overnight, the snow fell, blanketing our back yard in pristine white, and as Kevin hands me a refill on my morning cup, steam curling and rising, I notice the new light has gone slightly rose, like the delicate petal of an opening flower.  I whisper a prayer that always rises in me when it snows, […]

I keep coming back to this, Adam quietly ferrying gifts out the front door, packing our cars the day we traveled to my parents’ house for our annual family Christmas, how he met me at the foot of the stairs again and again, accepting boxes and baskets from my hands with silent happiness even though […]

Out on the run in the early morning, the light barely an hour old, Kevin and I wake up to the day together, having just come awake again to God, our blank hands turned up, open and empty. For years, it’s been like this, the two of us sipping our coffee in the predawn, desperate […]

Three days I bake cookies as big as my hand—golden, caramel-sugar sweet, studded with chocolate and candy, a palm-full of sweet for the kids we will love in our church, with our church, on the last Sunday before Christmas.  A fat stack of self-sealing bags imprinted with snowflakes, for the cookies, sits on the bar […]

It is positively cold, the Advent night glittering, but we have come out anyway, following the light, looking for a glimpse of glory. Our dear friends and their tiny family huddle in a plywood sleigh, all pink cheeked and swathed in blankets and pom-pom hats, and only because the Lord is within me and everything […]

“Hey, are you still praying about that stuff on our prayer board?” I hear Josh ask this of Riley as we ease in at a stoplight, on our way home from their classes.  Filtered through the fiery trees, late afternoon sunlight bathes the world in warm pinks and golds.  In the rearview mirror, I can […]

Caught up, as usual, in a morning flurry, I pause to hug Adam on my way out the door, to tell him I hope he enjoys his overnight field trip.  Most years, the staff at the school Adam attends arranges a stay in the lodge at a nearby park, where the school community does both […]