Out on the run in the early morning, the light barely an hour old, Kevin and I wake up to the day together, having just come awake again to God, our blank hands turned up, open and empty. For years, it’s been like this, the two of us sipping our coffee in the predawn, desperate […]

Three days I bake cookies as big as my hand—golden, caramel-sugar sweet, studded with chocolate and candy, a palm-full of sweet for the kids we will love in our church, with our church, on the last Sunday before Christmas.  A fat stack of self-sealing bags imprinted with snowflakes, for the cookies, sits on the bar […]

I am on my way out for a walk, pausing in the doorway to listen, one hand on the brassy knob, as Riley begins to read to her class online a thank you letter she has written to me. And this is where I am today, standing not in the place of grace, because from […]

Caught up, as usual, in a morning flurry, I pause to hug Adam on my way out the door, to tell him I hope he enjoys his overnight field trip.  Most years, the staff at the school Adam attends arranges a stay in the lodge at a nearby park, where the school community does both […]

Up the hill and around the curve, our nonpartisan feet beat out a unified rhythm, our graying hair slipping out of knots and flying free of caps, my friends and I speaking of how, during the viciousness of election season, the rotten, tongue-flung mud has splattered us all.  Guiding one another by the direction of […]

“This is where your shoulders are actually supposed to rest,” my physical therapist says.  She has taken muscle and bone in capable hands and has literally rotated my shoulders back and down, holding them carefully in place as I lay, yielded, on her therapy table. “I’m sure it feels weird, though, because your muscles have […]

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 […]

Dear friend, our work is worship. My sister-friend, who forever speaks God’s words back to me, sends this text in the early morning, while the daylight is still new, as I rub my eyes and contemplate the day, the work, that I know God has planned well ahead of me. They are burnt offerings. By […]

How much pain do you feel right now?” On the intake forms at the doctor’s office, Riley assesses her pain level at a ten, on a scale from one to ten, and watching her click hard on the notebook-sized computer provided by the office staff, I lean over and repeat my explanation. “So, one means […]