Today, I will hug each of my children as many times as I serve them meals — because children’s hearts feed on touch. I’ll look for as many opportunities to touch my children today as possible — the taller they are, the more so. ~Ann Voskamp Every day breathing, for me, means learning this: love comes first. I remember […]

It’s as though every day is the first time I’ve met God, the first time I’ve loved Him. I wake up and I can’t remember who I am, or that I’m abundantly blessed.  I feel trapped in the weary, aware of the walls that surround me, boxed in and dull.  And then He shows me […]

I know how you feel. Days come when I wake up and think, I don’t want to do this. I feel like the husk of a woman, emptied. I am clay, a bowl dusty from the kiln, all scooped out by the master’s hand and cooling in the ashes.  With His fingers He has crumbled and […]

It’s the little things that help us choose joy, like Saturday mornings with no where to go.  We have been so busy with Upward basketball lately that we’ve missed those slow, lazy beginnings when Kevin and I sleep in, take coffee upstairs, and sip and talk, and our kids curl up in the chairs in […]

Sometimes, I’m thankful for autism. On days like Tuesday, when Riley jumps in the van and puts her fingers on my shoulder, waiting.  When I look back at her and she smiles, words tumbling out, words like these, words that cut me sharp but leave her pristine: “Mom, today someone said a bad word at […]

Thursday morning, I push a table knife right through the bottom of a glass jelly jar. Nothing shatters.  Nothing cracks.  The knife jabs in more deeply than it should.  And turning the jar upward on a diagonal, I see the flat, silver, jelly-smeared tip of my knife jutting messy through a rounded, toothless gape, all […]

Tuesday night, Zoe stood on the stage at school, nervous even though she’d said she wouldn’t be; all decked out in black velvet, deep green organza, and the sparkly tights.  They were itchy—the tights—but she wore them anyway, and that’s how I knew what this spelling bee meant to her. That, and the fact that […]

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 […]

Do not believe that I have mastered contentment. I pursue it…ruthlessly.  But just as I feel it graze my fingertips, it disappears, the butterfly I cannot catch, dancing just nearby. Do you struggle, like me?  Blessed beyond what you can believe and yet still somehow allowing the ridiculous sigh from your lips?  I count gifts, […]

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 […]