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 […]

“I just hope God let’s me learn how to drive,” Riley ventures. Her voice waivers; the flicker from the TV only half lights her face. I don’t have to see her clearly to know that her ocean blue eyes glisten wet, threatening a storm. “I know,” I say and Kevin nods. Riley has talked about […]

About a mile out, the runner begins to hear the finish. When all he can see is still just road–that sunlit glint in the asphalt, those weather-worn and faded lines, the gravel and litter and patches of grass, the bib pinned to another runner’s shirt–he begins to hear first the music with its dull boom. […]

The breeze falls light on my cheeks and lifts the flyaways around my ears, moving unseen like the Spirit, holding me carefully as I walk out of the crisp Autumn morning and into the last dying traces of Summer heat.  I allow myself deep, slow, limitless breaths, gazing up at the sky stretching out in […]

After supper and all our lingering, we wander from the table on the porch like suddenly unmoored boats, drifting away beneath the glow of the twinkle lights.  Our conversation fades with a last few dropped notes above the drone of the cicadas and the clatter of silverware against our plates as we collect the remnants […]

In the late afternoon, I sit on the sofa holding a mug of peppermint tea, feeling the happy weight of a new cookbook in my lap.  For all our turning to technology, I still savor the turn of a page, the texture of paper in my fingers.  I glance up from the glossy photographs, the […]

Quarter till midnight on New Year’s Eve, the night dark and chilly, and somehow the stars that always twinkle just there, where He placed them, look like other-worldly confetti, like polished sterling fresh from the Refiner’s fire, scattered wide, celebrating glory.  I glance up and I know deep: this new year is all His too. […]

3 am and I wake with a gasp, resurrected from deep sleep.  I am so tired that the word tired doesn’t quite work.  Trampled might be better. It is an unlikely night for a victory. Adam stands next to my bed, shifting, trying for words.  I’m not sure if he touched me or if I […]

It will look worse before it looks better. Spring cleaning in early summer (because it takes me weeks to find the sabbatical I’ve been chasing), and this I keep reminding myself while making dinner on a tiny slice of counter top in the kitchen.  In the background, the collection of pitchers I pushed back to […]