In the middle of prayer, my friends and I huddled holy around that old table, I hear Riley on the stairs. “Yes,” she says, her pure voice rising sweet with ours, her assent like a clasping hand, an enveloping arm.  It’s as though she’s come upon our group hug and wrapped herself around us. And […]

We stand in a huddled line, breath like mist in the frosty cold, our hands stuffed in our pockets. Seven minutes until the DMV opens, and we wait like a semi-orderly herd of sleepy sheep staring expectantly at a storefront door. “If we had a YouTube channel, this would be the episode to watch,” I […]

I slide my thumbs over the curves of an apple, holding it under the tap. Water splashes over Granny Smith green, green like early leaves with sun shining through. Before slicing in, before bruising the fruity flesh, I wash. The water chills my thumbs, my palms. Zoe leans on the bar, suddenly open, telling me […]

The sky, like the soft skin of a plum, ripens from the bottom, hinting at some sweet, fleshy truth beyond its careful covering.  I rock back and forth in a rocker on the porch, relishing the chance to savor the change, wondering how it would be to peel back that top layer of rich cloud.  […]

I like the way God built me.   She says it like it’s the simplest thing.  The words fall easy, fluttering elegant, lighting on a twisty varicose vein that branches pen-thin across my thigh.  I had been tracing the bruised lines with my finger.  These spidery betrayers invade, cracks in the shell of me suddenly […]

It is the way she says it—all laced with delicious joy—that makes me stop.  She sounds the way I might were I to say I get to sleep in or I.can’t.believe I get to lay on the beach and just read—like she’s just realized a thrill, an unexpected and rare gift, and she savors the sweet taste.   […]

In the car at night and I can’t see her face, just the blur of headlights and the jostle of cars weaving in and out of lanes, just the green-lit signs labeling exits.  From behind me, she speaks, and the tentative way she shapes her words tells me that she chooses this time for the […]

Streaks of fire and amber color the clouds, royal streamers declaring another day done, and I sit down with the glory at my back and the warm, afternoon breeze tickling my cheeks. We love Summer for meals on the screened porch out back, where we can hear the birds singing loud and see the worms […]

Saturday, we pile in the van to take Zoe to a friend’s house for the afternoon, and I switch on navigation on my phone.  All the times Zoe’s been there to play, for birthday parties, and Kevin has always driven her.  Before we pull out of the driveway, the digital female voice has repeated the […]

Well, we’re tracked out for 3 weeks, and my kids are at the beach.  My Mom and Dad (There are honestly not words to describe how wonderful they are to me.  They are a continual example of what loving God’s way is truly all about, and I don’t deserve them!  I’m thankful that God put […]