It’s an old cliché, but true:  Life is a marathon. And this, also, is true:  When I woke up on marathon morning, I didn’t want to run the race. And since transparency happens to be my Call, I should also say that most of my living happens exactly this way.  I am not very good […]

The truth is, our living is messy. It isn’t the carefully selected photos we share on Facebook. In the flurry of morning readying, I reach into the cabinet for a cereal bowl. A red-brown something has dried over the blue and purple flowers, and something tiny green and branching like a tree—something resembling a flattened […]

Just as the morning becomes, we run together beneath the sun.  A light breeze wraps our shoulders.  I glance up at the sky—blue, the color rich like Morpho wings, with wisps of sea foam cloud.  I stare hard, gasping.  Day after day, the heavens pour forth speech.  “They have no speech, they use no words; […]

The minute I see the buses, my throat gets thick, before I’ve even spotted my son in the crowds of children clotting the walkways. I’ve come to cheer him on, to acknowledge that he works hard and pushes through.  I want him to see me there waiting, watching.  “Run, Adam.  Run!”  I will shout his […]

Okay, listen:  whatever you feel like doing, do the opposite. It’s a war strategy, really.  It’s your secret weapon when the taunts come sharp and deadly, when your enemy thunders toward you, when the ground trembles with the assault.  It’s what I’m learning to do when I face defeat, weariness, complaint, anger, bitterness, pride, fear; […]

Quarter till midnight on New Year’s Eve, the night dark and chilly, and somehow the stars that always twinkle just there, where He placed them, look like other-worldly confetti, like polished sterling fresh from the Refiner’s fire, scattered wide, celebrating glory.  I glance up and I know deep: this new year is all His too. […]

Five o’clock and the day gasping, my children hang on me like satellites in orbit.  I stand at the sink, rubbing green beans between my fingers in a colander, the water rushing over, warm.  For a breath—just one—I wonder about where these beans grew–what close field, the color of the soil, the smell.  I wonder whose […]

First light.  I sit on the porch facing the street, salt glaze on my finger tips, the house silent behind me. I peel back the skin of a banana, staring at the collection of water bottles at my feet.  For a moment, I feel jealous of everyone inside, sheets laying lightly on their skin, sleep […]

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us (Hebrews 12:1). The night before my first half marathon, I had a dream: Twenty minutes late, and […]

I’m back from a run, my pulse still elevated, sweat dripping. “Mom?  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.  Before I leave, every run, she asks me where I’ll be running, rehearses the steps with me street by […]