This morning a verse that I’ll carry all day, like a go bag or, a staff that bears my weight and steadies my feet: Continue steadfastly in prayer, staying awake in it with thanksgiving. I sat on my parents’ back porch for a while just receiving provisions, grace, from God, sipping coffee while the day […]

Here we are, home at last, our bags scattered on the floor in the doorway, dropped, like my young adults still discard their backpacks after school. You know the feeling, or at least I hope you do, what it’s like to come home after you’ve traveled away, when the touch of other places still clings […]

This afternoon, I walk down vibrant streets amid trees of every shape and size, their saturated leaves upturned to receive, awaiting the coming of nourishing rains.  Sweat meanders down my spine, the humidity thick and heavy with promises.  It will rain today, in heavy sheets, but in the meantime, the landscape waits, dense with anticipation. […]

In the late afternoon on Maundy Thursday, I crash, feeling my own slow crumble as I curl into a corner of the couch and tentatively flex, cataloguing the cramps in my feet.  Sometimes, as I consider the years stretching on and no end in sight to the needs in front of me, I feel a […]

I watch Riley’s face as she describes her first in-person day in vocational school, how animated she has become, how her eyes shine and her smile deepens, her voice lilting while she recounts all the details to a close friend of mine who, having come over with a tray of baton cookies in her hands […]

“So many people still have their Christmas lights out,” Kevin says, speaking our mutual thought aloud into the chilled night as we drive home, as we slow to absorb the weighty glistening that somehow makes everything else feel a little lighter. In every season, twinkling lights remind me of Jesus, the Light the darkness can’t […]

Riley leans against the kitchen counter, waiting out a two-minute timer that counts down while chunks of chicken sizzle in the pan.  She holds a fork aloft as she alternately considers the cooking meat and the digital display, as she murmurs to herself about what’s next.  I watch her head nod gently as she speaks, […]

My friend steps in the house quietly, glancing toward the desk where Riley sits taking an online college course, slipping her arms around me to pull me into a hug. “It’s good to see you,” I say softly over her shoulder, thinking that there’s nothing quite like feeling your arms full of friendship. She draws […]

I’m driving to school with Adam when the notification comes that Riley has texted, and I smile, knowing that she’s awake and is, as she always describes it, “encouraging everyone on the family Wordle thread.” I can see her in my mind, half risen on one elbow, sleep still hanging about her eyes.  I whisper […]

By the time Riley comes to find me for our prayer, I have slid so far down into my pillows as to be almost completely horizontal, and, to be honest, I keep falling asleep, so the book in my hands keeps lightly knocking me in the nose and waking me up.  I have read the […]