Here we sit, Josh’s mom–my friend Camille–and me, two sisters, on a velvet sofa in a coffee shop called Lucky Tree, twisting cups in our open hands, talking, as mothers do, of life-giving. Oddly, it strikes me that when we get up and leave this place, an impression of our bodies will remain, lightening the […]

This morning a verse that I’ll carry all day, like a go bag or, a staff that bears my weight and steadies my feet: Continue steadfastly in prayer, staying awake in it with thanksgiving. I sat on my parents’ back porch for a while just receiving provisions, grace, from God, sipping coffee while the day […]

It’s evening here, where our feet beat a path down a dizzying urban road that smells like sunbaked asphalt and motor oil and sweat, like jasmine perfume and donuts and bitter coffee, where stars blink on the buildings as well as in the sky, lighting the night an inky crimson black.  The intersections pulse with […]

Here we are, home at last, our bags scattered on the floor in the doorway, dropped, like my young adults still discard their backpacks after school. You know the feeling, or at least I hope you do, what it’s like to come home after you’ve traveled away, when the touch of other places still clings […]

Adam’s delight. This my friend—my sister—texts after looking at the pictures from our trip, just those two words and a series of hearts, having arrived in seconds at the treasure I will carry with me long after even our memories of summer have faded.  Adam’s delight, that wild smile stretching wide across his lean face, […]

I had asked God to help me see the people around me, even at the theme parks, even as we thrilled through the rides and managed the crowds, even waiting in lines and eating carnival-style food on the fly, even sweaty and wet and foot-sore at the end of the day, that I might have […]

“Strike on the batter,” Adam murmurs, leaning forward, elbows to knees, brilliant blues intently trained on the ball as it flies through the air and thuds against the catcher’s mitt. The batter steps back from the mound, adjusting his grip on the bat. “Two strikes,” Adam observes so quietly I almost don’t hear, sitting as […]

In the late afternoon on Maundy Thursday, I crash, feeling my own slow crumble as I curl into a corner of the couch and tentatively flex, cataloguing the cramps in my feet.  Sometimes, as I consider the years stretching on and no end in sight to the needs in front of me, I feel a […]

All I ask, Riley sitting beside me at the bar in the kitchen for lunch, us with our bright-fresh salads, glint of forks, napkins folded in neat rectangles, is, do you want to say the prayer? Umm, that’s okay, she says, I’m good, and then, her voice wavers, and her eyes suddenly fill with tears. […]

“Uh oh, I lost track,” Adam murmurs, when suddenly I press the brake a little too hard and the car lurches, at the exact moment when also I resentfully glare at the massive dump truck lumbering and grunting just ahead, when secretly I tuck a selfish, incredulous why into a shadowy part of my heart. […]