Finally together at the end of the day, and the murmur of quiet activity is grace.  Riley sits with her feet tucked under her at the bar, giggling over a word that twisted in her mouth when she said it, all those wispy, mussed hairs falling golden around her cheeks.  Zoe saunters in on sock […]

Standing there elegant in front of us all, she says to him, “I choose love.  I choose you. I choose the wonderful things about you and the things that drive me nuts.  I choose the good days and the bad ones,” and her voice doesn’t even quaver. She is radiant with chosenness, and it strikes me that […]

It really wasn’t until we turned into the neighborhood—5 minutes, maybe, from home–that the ice really made me nervous.  An hour and a half away, we’d started to see a dusting, just bits of dazzling white in the grass; here and there, a glassy ditch or frozen puddle. If it’s like this here, Zoe murmured then, […]

“Where are you going?” He asks, in a voice muffled with sleep, a voice just on the edge of awareness. My hand stills on the doorknob.  I turn back toward him, not much more than a shadow. “I’m goi–I can’t sleep.”  My voice falls lightly.  “I need to—I don’t want to keep you awake,” I […]

Early evening, and already I feel splintered and scattered and sore from carrying the day.  It has been one of those—the kind of day that wakes me before the sun, pressing into me in the emptied hours, and then sends me chasing time and late for everything; the kind of day in which, right from […]

In the early hours before the sun rises, we rise, and we’re so tired we move around in silence for a while, fumbling to make the bed, pressing back against sleepiness to dress for exercise before we find an excuse.  We’ve tried so hard for intentionality with regard to first things—time with God, time with each […]

Today, this extravagant Gift: Gently, he traces my cheekbone with the edge of his thumb, just lightly.  It is a simple, wordless gesture, so powerfully warm as to thaw the edges of the day. “I know,” I say, “I have a nasty bump there,” thinking immediately of the blemish on my cheek, red and tender […]

She follows me upstairs, after we return from some festive errand, and we drop our bags on the floor.  She touches my shoulder, gripping me lightly, catching my gaze. “Will you do something for me?” She asks, as though the possibility exists that I will say “no,” though we both know I never would. “Sure,” […]

I call it my spot, that place right beside where I seem to melt into him like a carefully sculpted, invisibly bonded part; that place I best know how to fit.  It is a place carved in the shape of me. In the early morning, this is how we pray:  He reaches for me, and I […]

Morning comes and we hear the sound of the ocean, the crash of waves. “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of that sound,” Kevin says, fresh from sleep.    Almost all week, we’ve kept the door open to hear the sea, and I keep listening to the Spirit reminding me that the voice of […]