We should give this hour a name, when the afternoon swells like a bruise and we all feel molasses-slow, our faces stretched into unending yawns, and still, we have work to do. I want to pour myself another cup of coffee, but I think I have consumed more than enough caffeine today, and something feels […]

Sometimes all I can see is what hurts, what’s hard, what I wish could be different. Before we even leave our driveway, Riley stops, setting her water bottle down, handing me the paper, her pen. She lifts her sunglasses, peers more closely at her phone. “It says license plate, so…” She talks to herself more […]

“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. […]

I like the way God built me.   She says it like it’s the simplest thing.  The words fall easy, fluttering elegant, lighting on a twisty varicose vein that branches pen-thin across my thigh.  I had been tracing the bruised lines with my finger.  These spidery betrayers invade, cracks in the shell of me suddenly […]

This week, a departure for Kevin and me, a Sabbath rest: Tucked away, pulled back from the busy road and held–but lightly–by the trees, we hide beneath the fog.  Sound is magnified here, somehow, or perhaps it is that other noise removed leaves room for hearing birdsong, the cheeky chatter of squirrels, the deep-throated gurgle […]

Just as the morning becomes, we run together beneath the sun.  A light breeze wraps our shoulders.  I glance up at the sky—blue, the color rich like Morpho wings, with wisps of sea foam cloud.  I stare hard, gasping.  Day after day, the heavens pour forth speech.  “They have no speech, they use no words; […]

Just home. The front door opens as we pull into the drive, as my friend and I unfold our legs and think toward dislodging my bags, my chair, the hat I wear on the beach.  Our conversation hangs unfinished and that suits us fine. Conversations between true friends never really end anyway. We leave the […]

Source: healthyfitandtoned.tumblr.com via Elysa on Pinterest Won’t you come and run with me?  The skies are blue, the sun warm and guilding life with gold, the road open with possibility. I am a runner.  And it teaches. And I’m not trying to be dramatic about it, but the truth is this:  I never believed I […]

The first time I served soup after Adam’s teacher helped us expand his diet, Adam went in the kitchen, got a paper towel, and then tried to dry up all the extra liquid in his bowl.  I still make him eat soups, but I always know he’s going to be less than excited about it. […]

Last week, Kevin and I went backpacking on the Appalachian Trail.  I loved it.  And I hated it.  And now, days later, I still want to go back. Identity intrigues me, the way we allow the details of life to shape our perception of possibility; the way I have limited my own view of who […]