For the better part of an hour, I listen to our engaged couple getting ready to go for a walk. They arrive at the moment together after lunch, having noted and discussed at length that, in the plan I had helped them create for the afternoon, a walk comes next.  I hear them still processing […]

“You with your hand rubbing your forehead,” my friend says to me, chuckling, the computer like a window fusing her home and mine, and us with our rumpled faces, talking quietly in the early morning, talking of life and how it’s hard. I do not, until the moment she says this, realize what I’ve been […]

“Have you changed your sheets recently?”  I ask over lunch, just as Riley stabs at her salad with her fork, catching up a bit of lettuce, a brilliant coin of carrot. It’s true of us all: we can think no one knows where we’ve been, that no one knows we’ve walked right off course for […]

Adam shows up at the brunch table on Saturday morning wearing his glasses, a little smudged, because he’s still learning to clean them, and I treasure it up, because he has chosen to wear them on his day of rest. Here I am too, drawing my chair–blue, like a summer sky—up to our table, also […]

I can hear Riley running behind me now, feet crunching on the glittering asphalt, her breaths ragged and shallow, and I smile, remembering a conversation I’d had with her about breathing.  Riley has been training to run a 5K. Here we all are, just a few days past Christmas, on the other side of the […]

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 so thankful God gave us such a beautiful day for our walk,” Riley says, and it’s like she’s reading my mind as I stare wide-eyed at flame-red leaves set against a cloudless sky, as I watch the sunlight dance, as I listen to my daughter, who once could not speak at all, describe what […]

I flip the page on a brand-new week in my planner, wagging my pencil back and forth in my fingers. I had expected to find space for a breath, a quiet stillness on the empty grid within which to pause and practice a Sabbath surrender before writing in my careful strategy for the week. We […]

“Bible reading, Bible reading, Bible reading,” Adam calls out, his voice dry and deep, an early crackling that sounds a bit to my imagination like the feet of God walking in the Fall of His creation. “Bible reading, Bible reading, Bible reading, Bible reading, Bible reading.” Adam’s a bird—my grandma used to say that about […]