In the afternoon, we burst through the door, with three different conversations knotting in the air—one thread hard to follow, one dangling, one darting so fast I can’t keep up.  A general fumbling ensues for snacks, and Mom, I need to tell you, and What I have to do today is, and May I watch Tom and Jerry, […]

I am an everyday daughter of the King. Or, I am a daughter of the King every day. It’s all a matter of how I hold those words—wrapped sweaty and sqeezed together in the palm or held up to the Light.  I’ve come to see that the way I order those two words—where and how I […]

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 […]

“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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]