Mirrors lie, Amor Towles wrote in A Gentleman in Moscow.  I had to grab a pen and write the quote in my journal because it rang true, because I had heard those lies for most of my life.  I remember it now, away from home, as I walk through a glassy, windowed hallway and catch […]

“That’s so sweet,” Riley says, head bent over her phone. At first I forget to respond, or am at least so focused on traffic and stuck in my own muddled mind that I don’t, even though I hear her. So she repeats the comment, glancing up at me, “Aww, that’s so sweet,” her emphasis like […]

In the picture my friend sends me, Adam leaps, his long legs artfully bent, his face passionately focused. I imagine a crescendo, a bold, sweeping musical phrase building in Adam’s heart, exploding through his body. My son is a dancer. I am someone who dances for joy, often in worship, often poorly, laughing because I […]

On Monday morning, I wake up sore. Before I open my eyes, a shadowy thought moves through my mind: I can’t do this. I will not be able to do this. The weekend had been consoling and also desolate. On Saturday, Kevin and I had painted walls (renovation!) until our hands and feet felt swollen […]

Into the thin of night, during those turbulent hours when panic threatens the best of our rest; during those hours when the conversations of young friends become so exposed that with raw, sleepy voices they begin to truly know each other; during those hours when so many souls bound for home finally drift away; into […]

Spiritual formation is renovation of the soul. That’s what I’m thinking as I empty the drawers of an old desk into a tote, as I shake my head over the accumulation of the years. In the deepest drawer, I find a knot of cords, and I smile, thinking this is how my thoughts would look […]

Fresh from the shower on an 80-degree day that feels thick with the promise of Summer, Adam spins–literally–into the kitchen wearing flannel pajama pants–buffalo check–and a salt-washed long-sleeved t-shirt as blue as his eyes. I wonder how he doesn’t instantly feel that sticky prickle of after-shower sweat at the base of the neck and the […]

Just home from a walk with a friend–skin flushed with sun; fallen petals from the cherry trees stowaways in my hair, on the edge of my shirt, even precariously crumpled against one sticky ankle–and Riley comes to meet me at the door. I hear her carefully set down whatever she has in her hands; I […]

This cluttered morning, sweaty with exercise, I bend myself into a stretch that makes me sigh with pleasure. Nothing feels better to me after a workout than the patient extension of sore and weary muscles, that resting pull that draws out pain with so much tension. Routinely, I pull my shoulders down, away from my […]

This morning, I feel the outer crumbling, how slowly I waste away–not me, but the shell of me; the me you would recognize; the me you could touch, at least while we’re here. A cellular avalanche starts the moment our bodies begin to breathe; but breathe God and the opposite happens too. The resurrected body, […]