121Sep 13, 2013
On the bar in the kitchen, I find a scrap of paper she has forgotten. The blocked letters and lines and paragraphs seem too serious for her, too stark. Name: _______________________________ Title/Description for yourself (something you would naturally say to introduce yourself): _______________________________. Her handwriting softens the lines, beautiful, plain, easy. Riley. Peace. I lay […]
122Aug 30, 2013
“1,2,3…Okay, Mom—I’m going to count how many people signed my yearbook. Let’s see how many I have.” And she begins again, confident that she has my attention. “Let’s see, I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8…and here I have 9, 10, 11, 12,”she says, counting the ones who wrote words and the […]
123Aug 16, 2013
Sometimes my hurry seeps into the most precious places. Sometimes I carry it into eternal spaces, into my living resurrected, into holy things not made for hurry. Hurry is a temporal symptom. It is a physical distraction. Hurry is born of all that passes away. With a sigh, we lay our hands gently against our […]
124Aug 2, 2013
I admit it: Sometimes my attitude stinks. I wake up heart sick—breathing sighs, swallowing complaint, coughing up rot. It spreads quickly, my gray brooding. Suddenly I look around, and my husband and children carry my heavy. My ungratefulness wraps their shoulders, black and thick-chained. And together we ache, weary of this place, and our blinded […]
125Jun 28, 2013
I do not write in love if I do not write this clearly, and with all the urgency I feel: Jesus Christ, the Lamb Slain, the One Raised, the Word made Flesh, the Lord—the One and Only—He reshapes me. And He’s coming back. It will happen in the blink of an eye, but it will […]
126Jun 21, 2013
Streaks of fire and amber color the clouds, royal streamers declaring another day done, and I sit down with the glory at my back and the warm, afternoon breeze tickling my cheeks. We love Summer for meals on the screened porch out back, where we can hear the birds singing loud and see the worms […]
127Jun 7, 2013
Sometimes for weeks on end, I feel empty and lost. Gone. I walk around like a shell of myself, dreading the things I have to do, wishing away the moments, missing the gifts. I chew on my own tongue, finding it hard to say the healing things. There’s this space, a gulf yawning wide between […]
128May 17, 2013
There’s really only one place to start, only one space for the dying of seed, the breaking of ground. I stand in her doorway–just for a breath, my hand on the door frame, watching light cast aside shadows. She rests, still cocooned, all possibility swathed in quilted blossoms. I whisper thanks and ask for protection, […]
129Apr 26, 2013
Thirteen years ago, God wrote it loud, carved it deep in the walls of our hearts: It doesn’t matter what makes sense. And because He knows I need things repeated, not quite two years later He traced over the words again, and the letters were block-shaped and quick. He added this: And it doesn’t matter […]
130Apr 12, 2013
Mom, come look. She says it breathlessly, wiping sweat and wild hair from her forehead with her hand. I stand at the sink, washing my hands with the honeysuckle soap, preparing to chop onions for our supper. “Come look at what?” I ask, drying my hands on a towel. I reach in the cabinet for […]