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 […]

Riley sits at the bar, fresh-faced and bright, if still a little rumpled with sleep. She looks like Spring, like the first day of sapphire skies; like new flowers with blushing, velvet leaves; like anticipation; like hope sitting right there on a bench in my kitchen., and it’s striking to me because it’s the opposite […]

This morning, I feel the outer crumbling, how slowly I waste away–not me, but the shell of me; the me you would recognize; the me you could touch, at least while we’re here. A cellular avalanche starts the moment our bodies begin to breathe; but breathe God and the opposite happens too. The resurrected body, […]

I don’t know her name–not the sound of her voice, not even the shape of her smile. As it is these days, because of the mask she wears, her eyes—dark and determined and locked on mine–are all I know of her, those eyes and that hair, curling dark around her head in short, wild corkscrews. […]

The grass glitters with frost, twinkling Messiah-lights that will remain long after Christmas. Long after we have packed away our bulbs and vacuumed away all traces of the tree; after we, traveling on to January, have stopped announcing our King, all creation still will proclaim His praise in a language understood in every nation. I […]

In our many hours of learning, we learn how to pray. I pass out empty index cards because my children, who find it hard to function without discernment of the edges, need discrete lines, spaces they can see in which to realize and organize real hopes into real petitions. The moments to consider, to plan, […]

In the late afternoon, while I stand in the kitchen strategizing, with ingredients for four different meals sizzling or simmering or slicing under the knife, with mixing bowls and crumb dotted small appliance parts gathering at the sink, I realize I have run out of spoons, and I don’t mean the kind I use for […]

In the garage, on the way in at the end of a bruised up day, Riley has another seizure.  Kevin, coming around the other side of the car, sees her stop, notices her sudden silence.  He calls her name, and she turns her head but can’t answer. Stuck, her head bobs, like something sinister has […]

In the window, the orchid’s petals drop, crisp and thin, like elegant parchment cut-outs piling in drifts on the sill. Their rose hue has faded to ivory; they age like paper, but far more quickly. I cup my hand, sweeping in the soft, dead things, murmuring about the loss of another fragile life. “I wonder […]

We sneak out on the porch like wild children, flicking lights off as we go, laughter rushing over our tongues like the crisp night air. We open our fists, letting down the day, making room to feel in our palms what can never be traced with our fingers. I blink up at the inky black […]