“How was your day?” I ask Riley as she slides into the car after work, and what I really mean is how were the last few hours, and what astounds me when I ask is that, as usual, she seems as peaceful as the ocean at low tide, still, like glass. “Work was amazing,” she […]

This four-lane road, the last main thoroughfare before Adam and I get to school, snakes about in hills and curves sometimes tightly compressed and sometimes stretched and rising.  It’s a good analogy for life, this drive, for the way we all get pushed and pressed, the way a day can feel like a long, blind […]

In the new, pink light, Kevin and I set out on a run, past trees covered in bridal blossoms like lace trailing down, limbs cupping silken petals in shades of plum, and bushes tossing lemon-yellow blooms on the ground in front of them.  It’s early yet, and Spring has sprung. I can tuck my head […]

“Mom Jones?”  Riley’s voice stops me mid-confession. Jones, what Riley calls “our funny last name,” is a silly joke from years ago that eventually became a sign of Riley’s affection. I look at her, startled out of a full-on run to Jesus.  In the space of the last hour, pride and comparison, mistaken identity and […]

I laugh in disbelief.  It is the initial sputtering sound of my mind and heart agreeing, I believe, help me in my unbelief, which is what I feel right now, even if my lips have yet to utter the prayer, as I laugh out loud over the mess of how-in-the-world splayed out in front of […]

My body groans this morning, acutely I feel it crumbling, as Kevin and I head out for an early run, searching for renewal, and not just of muscles and tissues and cells.  Be transformed by the renewing of your mind, the apostle Paul wrote, and as our feet begin to tap staccato, I remember the […]

At the end of Adam’s dinnertime prayer—thank you, God, for lemon chicken; thank you, for green beans, always specific gratitude for the foods he likes to eat and complete silence on the foods he doesn’t, uttered in his deep, pausing voice over our table, our steaming plates of food, our linked hands–tonight, Riley carries on, […]

I run my finger over the scars on the dresser in my bedroom, Grandma, twice etched, raw, like an incision in the wood in Riley’s handwriting.  Always in twos. I murmur the dark echo of an old cliché, the shadow of an old joke still half bitter to me, but only by half, because God […]

Home from carpool, I pull the wet, clean clothes from our washer and toss them, with a shake, into the dryer.  I can hear Riley in the kitchen, her voice bright and morning-new, counting to Christmas.  “Just 18 more,” she says, with enthusiasm, but I push the button on the machine and lose the rest […]

We gather as family around the table to celebrate Josh’s birthday—Camille and Ray and Kevin and me with our kids, all following the hostess in the Japanese restaurant like ducks in a line, and I count the blessing.  In my heart, every meal is a eucharist. And when He had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it […]