Travel weary and temporarily keyless, we knock, feeling as dusty as the door, as parched as the plants.  I run my thumb along the delicate thinning edge of a swooping leaf, crisp and browned, like old parchment.  On the door, the vinyl letters have broken in places and begun to curl away, even as they still […]

This week, a departure for Kevin and me, a Sabbath rest: Tucked away, pulled back from the busy road and held–but lightly–by the trees, we hide beneath the fog.  Sound is magnified here, somehow, or perhaps it is that other noise removed leaves room for hearing birdsong, the cheeky chatter of squirrels, the deep-throated gurgle […]

Afternoon, and the beach becomes another elegant art, a mosaic of striking contrasts.  I love the seascape for the way she changes, for the intensity of her perspectives.  Across the water I see rain, a blue black bruise on the horizon blurring the line God made between the deep sea and the boundless sky.  I […]

In the water, I see the sky, bluer than the feathers of a bluebird, dramatic with wide, radiant strokes of cloud.  It’s enough to steal my breath.  The water itself looks silver in the sunlight. Except when we move across the bridge, the lake and the floating dock are completely still.  I settle into a […]

Morning comes and we hear the sound of the ocean, the crash of waves. “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of that sound,” Kevin says, fresh from sleep.    Almost all week, we’ve kept the door open to hear the sea, and I keep listening to the Spirit reminding me that the voice of […]

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 […]

It makes perfect sense to me that God brought me here, beside a clear, turquoise sea that shines like burnished silver, iridescent in the day’s dying light, to remind me to be available to Him.  Every day, He asks me to be available, waiting, watching, surrendered.  The doing remains His, the surrendering entirely mine. God gave us […]

High tide, and the waves curl deep, pounding the sand into a cliff at the break line. I sit watching one shore break after another, absorbing powerful beauty, the explosion of white caps, hard and close. I would love these waves if they broke a little further out and I could ride them in fast […]

Five o’clock on the beach, and the light falls soft and golden on our shoulders. It doesn’t escape me that on normal days, this hour finds me weary and pushing through, juggling homework and dinner and a thousand other things, counting the moments until I can sit down.  Usually around five I can feel the […]

We are not an easy family to love. I mean, even for us the loving isn’t always easy.  We are difficult, tired, a ball of chaos with accessories.  Everywhere we go, there are tote bags filled with an eccentric conglomeration of things—our accoutrements, I call them: stuffed monkeys and calculators; dry erase markers, insulin pens, […]