I love the light when it’s fresh at the start of the day.  It’s like a clean window we’ve not yet touched with our fingers; like the diaphanous edges of some sacred space.  Sitting on the porch in the morning feels like resting in the palm of God’s hand as He slowly opens his fingers.  This […]

Waiting at the stoplight on the way to school, drizzle dotting the windshield, and I grab my phone to take a picture of my daughter.  The cloud-cast makes her skin look more alabaster than olive-gold; makes her blue-gray eyes look stormy. “What’re you doing?” She asks.  But I catch the hint of a smile, just […]

My daughter is sixteen, so for her birthday we throw a big party at the building where our church meets.  And I receive this: a solid view of friendship. “Do you need help?” My friend asks, not in a maybe-I-can-do-a-few-things-if-it’s-convenient kind of way, but the way she always does, as though she’s already climbed up on that […]

Middle of the afternoon and I’m goofy-grinning over an armful of sorted socks, their neat little knots all white like dumplings; grinning even as they bob out of my arms and roll on the floor.  I’m not going to lie.  Something satisfies me about folding laundry.  I love those warm stacks with the clean-tucked edges, […]

“When I struggled so much with anxiety, God taught me to pray,” Riley says, lifting her hand and turning it over, as though neatly wrapping the words, a gift.  And then, when later we reach for each other’s hands, she quietly asks God to help her brother talk to us.  Maybe she’s just following Zoe’s lead. […]

Adam finds me sometimes, just to talk about the things that excite him. I’m one of the few with whom he’ll take that still awkward step, because he can appreciate the way that I know him, the way womb-forged bonds overcome every other kind of separation.  I almost always know what Adam means to say before he says […]

Today, just a prayer, whispered, then fervid and carpet-muffled because that’s where I plant my nose.  I can’t seem to bend low enough to accommodate the feel of Him.  It’s a prayer I need, one I offer often in some garbled, half-torn way. But He knows all the parts, so I don’t have to remember them, […]

“You know, even pain is a blessing,” he says to me, standing in the doorway still, where cool ultraviolet light bounces against glossy floor, where the warmth of conversation and reunion and the savory smell of roasted yams and honey ham and three variations on stuffing gives the whole room a burnished tone.  Right there, after delivering that […]

Thanksgiving leaves scatter across our table, as though the Wind has carried them in a flying whirl through the windows, twisting them across the grass and through the air to land where we gather to give thanks.  Adam walks to the table, turning first to reach for a pencil.  I feel what he is about to […]

Dinner time–almost, and already the crisp darkness makes our window panes cold beneath my fingers.  I switch on lamps to fill the room with light, light I hope will glow well beyond the house, slipping out around the edges of the panels of the curtains, beaming boldly through the glass.  And with the light, I pray […]