It’s time to leave, so I stand at the bottom of the stairs and call to my son.  I hear his music, the fullness in the air that always colors the rooms where he moves, the strains of worship that make our living rich.  His feet thump against the carpet in an unseen stretch of […]

Sometimes from the start of a day a dull ache builds, spreading slowly from the curve of my back well into the sharp edges of my shoulders.  It is the sore feel of self dying, the good ache of need, the one meant to remind me that God accomplishes and satisfies (Deuteronomy 8:3).  But the truth […]

Today, this encouragement: Write it down. In her lap, a piece of notebook paper sits folded, pressed beneath her hands.  She picks it up, fingering the edges and the corner, where the paper turns up like a curling wave. From across the room, I can see the faint blue ruling, the holes at the edges, […]

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 […]

It hardly feels like it’s been weeks now, weeks since we sat in my living room sharing friendship, talking about what inspires us.  And when these dear sister-friends of mine turned my question back to me, I said, “A million things.  A million things inspire me.”  I listed for them just some and neglected many more, but […]

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 […]