From a grassy field roadside, I gather up the picture of a broken barn with history clear tumbling from it’s splintered walls, the jagged boards dark, like the trunks of trees.  These planks, hewn from deadwood dragged, shaped over sawdust piles, sanded, treated, painted; nailed sharp, clean, with a satisfied whack—these planks caught the sweat […]

When we step onto the beach, the sea swells high and shimmers golden green in the sunlight.  A storm matures unseen somewhere off the coast, out over the great deep.  I know this, and still I cannot imagine how the water pools so high just here at the edge of the shore, why it gathers […]

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 love so many hurting people. And the impulse I have, because it’s God obliterating me, is to bring them joy. I want to grab the heavy shadows shrouding them and rip them apart with my hands. I want to free them from the grip of the things that steal their laughter. I want to […]

She’s afraid she’ll wake up and I’ll be forever gone, that the darkness will steal me away from her. We sit together all curled up, watching something on TV.  I absently stroke her hair with my fingers, gently nudging out the tangles, and she tries to move closer, to squeeze out all the space between […]

3 am and I wake with a gasp, resurrected from deep sleep.  I am so tired that the word tired doesn’t quite work.  Trampled might be better. It is an unlikely night for a victory. Adam stands next to my bed, shifting, trying for words.  I’m not sure if he touched me or if I […]

We walk in the museum as the day turns to shadow—my sister-friend and I and our bouncing scribble of children.  Our group moves like an earthworm—fat and thick in the middle, undulating in a thin, crooked line in front and behind.  We are multi-colored coats, scarves, boots and tennis shoes, wading into the snarl in […]

She sits, curled on my bed, the polish on her toes slightly chipped, and she reads, absently pushing an errant blonde wisp back from her forehead. I am struck by her beauty, the beauty of having her near. The reading has absorbed her, first her Bible, then the devotional book we gave her for her […]

It’s time. I glance at my watch and sigh, not ready to stand, not ready to gulp the last of my coffee and sit the mug by the sink, not ready to see Kevin off to work, not ready to help Adam brush his teeth.  Not ready.  Never quite ready. Upstairs, we stand in the […]

Saturday, we pile in the van to take Zoe to a friend’s house for the afternoon, and I switch on navigation on my phone.  All the times Zoe’s been there to play, for birthday parties, and Kevin has always driven her.  Before we pull out of the driveway, the digital female voice has repeated the […]