As your Christmas cards decorate our mail with friendship, I give thanks.  I walk down the road, swinging my arms, telling God how He’s always provided someone. I read your notes, happy to see the curves of your handwriting, as personal to you as your fingerprints.  I smile when you apologize, thinking your penmanship a […]

You say grace before meals./All right. / But I say grace before the play and the opera, /And grace before the concert and the pantomime, /And grace before I open a book, /And grace before sketching, painting,/ Swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing,/And grace before I dip the pen in the ink (~G.K. Chesterson, as […]

May your unfailing love be my comfort…(Psalm 119:76) Last night, they sat in the chair together, a boy and his dad.  For years, Kevin’s lap has been the place where Adam finds the most comfort.  In his most terrible moments, when he cries so hard he gasps for air, this is the place he remembers […]

I’m a runaway, convinced to stay by the love of a God who sees me. “Where have you come from and where are you going?” God said her name, mentioned details about her life, and then the question.  Hagar was an Egyptian, a slave, no one He should have sought.  She was an expectant mother used […]

As a little girl, I spent hours outside, running wild with the wind.  I lived in a house on the marsh of the Lowcountry, where the coming of rain smelled of pluff mud and rotting marsh grass, and humidity lay thick like a hand on my cheek. I played arm in arm with Summer heat, imagination […]

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.” […]

It’s funny how one word can mean such different things. In the afternoons, Adam learns to clean the house, my hand gesturing to a trash can he’s to empty or resting over his own, showing him the right way to hold a can of Scrubbing Bubbles.  Right now, we focus on three jobs—emptying trash cans, […]

Sometimes at night, when darkness has settled outside, Zoe and I dream of glittering crowns.  “Glittering’ is almost too dull a word.  These crowns are other-worldy—piercing, as opposed to just shining; stunning in a way that we will feel instead of simply see.  These crowns would make human beings shield their dimmed eyes, still dulled as we […]

“And a sword will pierce your own soul too.” ~Simeon (man “moved by the Holy Spirit”) to Mary (mother of the Savior of all mankind) the gospel of Luke, chapter 2, verse 35 She could not have known.  Standing there, with her baby just over a month old, showing up as she was for obedience—Mary […]