go to the dentist Last Thursday, I wrote it nonchalantly on the schedule, just below morning chores and breakfast. The girls already knew.  Riley pays attention to the calendar, had prayed about it the night before.  Remembering the last visit—when the dentist pulled me aside right next to Zoe and told me two of her permanent […]

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 […]

This is the first year that Adam has been able to tell me what he wants for Christmas.  Just a few weeks ago, I stood in the kitchen wrapping my arms around my nine year old son, who laughed but squirmed with discomfort.  I kissed him on the cheek and smiled into bright blue eyes […]

Just when the caterpillar thought his life had ended, he became a butterfly. ~Proverb For days, we stare at the five chrysalides hanging from the top of the butterfly habitat Zoe requested for her birthday, anticipating new birth.  Transformation is something we are passionate about, knowing it to be God’s skill, His masterpiece.  He’s woven […]

On Sunday, I felt the trembling, electric surge of deep knowledge, my breath catching in my throat as I held Zoe’s hand—too thin, the bones too visible, the skin cold and wrinkling.  I fumbled with Adam’s glucose meter, putting in a strip.  I changed the lancet in the tester so that I could prick her […]

The Cloud has lifted, and God is on the move.  He’s taking me somewhere new, and I’ve heard Him. Go. “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people with unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.” […]

We’re sitting in a circle, you and I, with half a dozen other people we love.  It’s late at night, past the hour when everyone started yawning, past the time when we all ambled into the kitchen looking for snacks, all the way past pitch dark and silence to that hour when the world seems […]

This morning, Adam couldn’t find his favorite math worksheet. “Three Steps?” he said to me, his face a few inches from mine, his body leaning in to where I sat sipping my coffee on the porch. Adam and I had communicated enough about Three Steps in the last week for me to know (finally) that this […]

A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.~ Proverbs 25:11 Let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. ~Ephesians 4:29 You know, words don’t really come easily to any of us. But in […]

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me (2 Corinthians 12:9). ~the apostle Paul, self-proclaimed “the worst of sinners” in his first letter to Timothy I really hate it […]