As Riley and Adam and I run beneath a sapphire sky, I keep time in blooms like lace gently swaying in trees that just weeks ago still stood beseeching, their empty limbs desperately reaching for God.  And now, it’s as though creation breathes again for the first time, newborn, naked and filling with life, all […]

Riley sits at the bar, fresh-faced and bright, if still a little rumpled with sleep. She looks like Spring, like the first day of sapphire skies; like new flowers with blushing, velvet leaves; like anticipation; like hope sitting right there on a bench in my kitchen., and it’s striking to me because it’s the opposite […]

Riley hears us on the stairs, the push-pull comedy of Kevin and me moving a desk up to the room from which Kevin now works most of the week. She hears her dad pouring out his strength; hears me straining to lift when the desk snags the edge of a step; hears both of us […]

Sometimes all I can see is what hurts, what’s hard, what I wish could be different. Before we even leave our driveway, Riley stops, setting her water bottle down, handing me the paper, her pen. She lifts her sunglasses, peers more closely at her phone. “It says license plate, so…” She talks to herself more […]

I open the door to my war room–just enough so I can step in–and survey the damage. Extra lamps clutter the floor, making saucer-sized indentations in the carpet. The idea stings–that this would be the room where light sources go into storage. Boxes stuffed and consigned to donation sit against the wall, covering over the […]