For my brothers and sisters roaming this desert land, wondering even now about the how: For you, it will maybe come out of nowhere, the way He spoke it.  Then again, maybe not. Through the middle, you be the tree in the wilderness, the tree that looks like my tree. He’d been leading up to it […]

“1,2,3…Okay, Mom—I’m going to count how many people signed my yearbook.  Let’s see how many I have.” And she begins again, confident that she has my attention.  “Let’s see, I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8…and here I have 9, 10, 11, 12,”she says, counting the ones who wrote words and the […]

Lay it down.  That’s what you do. You press it in His hands hard the first moment you smell the rain.  Don’t wait to surrender it. Cover yourself good, wrap up with Him, spend more time there, instead of less. Lay it down right then, and ask the people who love you to stand with […]

I bring my children home in the afternoon, as the sun beats hot on the pavement, and the one talks so quickly the words stick to each other as they pass through her lips.   She has stories and I was like and then questions and what are we and then she fills in the space by […]

The thick, ugly tissue had lived there a while, sucking up the nutrients in her food, making her sick.  That’s how these things happen—unbidden, unseen.  Tumors grow unchosen, uninvited, in our innocent and hidden places.  They rely on our blindness, sometimes on our refusal to see. And truly, my mother could not see the tumor […]

I do not write in love if I do not write this clearly, and with all the urgency I feel: Jesus Christ, the Lamb Slain, the One Raised, the Word made Flesh, the Lord—the One and Only—He reshapes me. And He’s coming back. It will happen in the blink of an eye, but it will […]

Just home. The front door opens as we pull into the drive, as my friend and I unfold our legs and think toward dislodging my bags, my chair, the hat I wear on the beach.  Our conversation hangs unfinished and that suits us fine. Conversations between true friends never really end anyway. We leave the […]

Sunday afternoon sunlight dances through the curtains, playing across the table.  Riley’s fingers tap against the computer keyboard.  She sits with papers strewn—bubble maps for planning paragraphs, comparison notes, an interview answered via email.  She stops periodically to move her finger across the page beside her, pausing to say, “Mom, I need help over here—with […]

She stands just on the other side of the bar as Kevin and I wash dishes, reading aloud to me from a book.  I’ve suggested that she read to herself, but she says she just likes reading to me.  The truth is, it’s easier for her to remember what she hears aloud.  Somewhere, that fact about […]

We sit at breakfast, light falling easy through the curtains, isolated in a moment that feels slower. She pauses, putting her toast on her plate, chewing on her bottom lip.  “Mom, I’m not sure about the words on some of those Valentines.” I knew we would come back to this conversation.  Last year, when I […]