341May 18, 2012
I live my life on an unpredictable sea. Â I’m guessing, but I think maybe you do too. Storms come without warning, and I fly overboard, plunged beneath the swells. Mother’s Day, and I sit at the table with Adam while Kevin puts the finishing touches on lunch–the beef stroganoff that has been simmering in the […]
342Apr 27, 2012
Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant between me and you…(Genesis 9:14,15). Twelve years old, and she asks for rainbows for her birthday. My rainbow, this reminder that God is faithful; this beauty—a whole spectrum of color, Light bent through rain until we see […]
343Apr 13, 2012
I’m back from a run, my pulse still elevated, sweat dripping. “Mom? Â You’re sweaty.” Riley’s voice rises from the living room, where she sits waiting on me, her pencil moving over a workbook in her lap. Â Before I leave, every run, she asks me where I’ll be running, rehearses the steps with me street by […]
344Mar 23, 2012
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 […]
345Mar 16, 2012
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. Â I feel trapped in the weary, aware of the walls that surround me, boxed in and dull. Â And then He shows me […]
346Mar 9, 2012
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 […]
347Mar 3, 2012
It’s the little things that help us choose joy, like Saturday mornings with no where to go. Â 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 […]
348Mar 2, 2012
Sometimes, I’m thankful for autism. On days like Tuesday, when Riley jumps in the van and puts her fingers on my shoulder, waiting. Â 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 […]
349Feb 10, 2012
Thursday morning, I push a table knife right through the bottom of a glass jelly jar. Nothing shatters. Â Nothing cracks. Â The knife jabs in more deeply than it should. Â 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 […]
350Jan 27, 2012
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. Â 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 […]