Evening, and twinkling lights glint on gold thread.  I ask Adam what he wants for Christmas and he says, “Presents.”  The word lights his eyes and tumbles out of his mouth with dancing laughter and an “Oh!” that wraps up the feeling of a bow-topped gift given, handled, expectantly shaken. “What kind of presents?” I say, reaching […]

Standing in line, and the black belt whirs, moving my groceries forward and beyond me. Up here in the front of the store, it’s noisy and crowded.  Lines snake back, crooked and jammed.  Carts rattle.  In front of me, the tables in the cafe are full of people talking and eating.  A little voice cries […]

Sometimes life strips us clean of words, and we sit together, quiet.  And maybe it’s that way so we’ll stop to listen. We walk through the rain and into the funeral chapel, gathering damp hugs on our way through the door.  We sit first, and then we stand, winding in long lines past photographs and […]

In the car at night and I can’t see her face, just the blur of headlights and the jostle of cars weaving in and out of lanes, just the green-lit signs labeling exits.  From behind me, she speaks, and the tentative way she shapes her words tells me that she chooses this time for the […]

Sometimes we finish the day in rags and mud, and the things we carry cover us like a tomb.  And it’s testimony to the Light in her that even though she’s afraid to be embarrassed, she says I can write about this, our walking through together. In my arms, she trembles.  “I just want to […]

So maybe today–maybe in this—it’s time to press on, even though it’s hard, and it hurts, and you want to give up. “But I’m dying,” she says to me, gasping, sweat gathering like a halo along her hairline.  She’s waiting for me to say she can quit, but I am not so easily convinced. “You’re […]

I walk into the kitchen from the garage, carrying an armful of things—a bag, a few books, a coffee mug someone left behind—on my way to distribute these and consider the afternoon climb, and one of my daughters presses into me, draping the now dangling legs, grasping me solid, clinging to me with now enfolding […]

Sometimes from the start of a day a dull ache builds, spreading slowly from the curve of my back well into the sharp edges of my shoulders.  It is the sore feel of self dying, the good ache of need, the one meant to remind me that God accomplishes and satisfies (Deuteronomy 8:3).  But the truth […]

I start our dinner in the morning so that the smell of simmering will bring warmth to the house all day.  This is also my preemptive strategy to avoid that moment in the weary hours when cooking no longer feels like an art and I murmur there’s still supper, forgetting the ever-constant whisper of the Spirit urging […]

Rigidity is a Spectrum curve, one we’ve worn to a polish, fast slipping our way through so often that we know the feel of it by heart.  After all, we’ve got not one track here, but two, and even though the trajectories spin differently, that particular curve is common to both. Something starts fresh, like […]