Into the night and our deep sleep comes the blare of an alarm. History repeats.  Emergency emergency wake up wake up, the alarm screams, and cartoon me jumps up and runs immediately into the wall, while the real not-yet-lucid me picks up my phone, swings my legs over the side of the bed, and pulls […]

Henry Blackaby, in his powerful study Experiencing God, taught me the life-changing difference between joining God where he already works and asking him to work according to my plans.  “We don’t choose what we will do for God,” Blackaby said.  “He invites us to join Him where He wants to involve us.” Riley has shown […]

Mirrors lie, Amor Towles wrote in A Gentleman in Moscow.  I had to grab a pen and write the quote in my journal because it rang true, because I had heard those lies for most of my life.  I remember it now, away from home, as I walk through a glassy, windowed hallway and catch […]

In the picture my friend sends me, Adam leaps, his long legs artfully bent, his face passionately focused. I imagine a crescendo, a bold, sweeping musical phrase building in Adam’s heart, exploding through his body. My son is a dancer. I am someone who dances for joy, often in worship, often poorly, laughing because I […]

The most effective training is hard. That’s what I tell myself as, on the exhale, I blow away the stray hairs that have slipped from my ponytail. Every other morning, I groan through a series of exercises meant to strengthen my core, which feels important to me as more and more natural “fairy hair” appears […]

The moment I return from my morning walk, Adam starts to move, like a pinball set in motion by the click of the front door. I hear his footsteps, purposeful and solid, before I actually see him, and just as I walk into the room, he snatches a sticky note from the edge of the […]

When we discover that Adam needs glasses, even his eye doctor has his doubts. “If he’ll wear them…” The doctor says, drawing out the ellipsis as he slowly extends the prescription in my direction. Oh, he’ll wear them, I’m thinking, watching the doctor’s back as he walks away, but it’ll take work. I snap a […]

The first time we walked into the eye doctor’s office, the top of Adam’s head came up to my waist. I remember the feel of his baby hand, the way his soft, stubby fingers tried in vain to reach my own. I gripped his wrist to be sure he wouldn’t wander. At the time, the […]

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 […]

We walk down the tree-lined sidewalk, pilgrims to Knowing, our bodies dappled with sun and dark, blotting leaves, our feet climbing a shadowy canopy. The air is thick with rain that just won’t fall; we glance up at a few steel-colored clouds backlit and rimmed in sunlight. We have logo-printed ponchos they gave us at […]