In the hospital, the hiring manager for patient services has been telling Riley about a job serving meals to the hurting, the sick. “No one wants to be in a hospital,” he explains to her in his office, “and so sometimes the patients won’t be very kind to you or happy to see you.  They […]

It’s predictable, really, that I should be standing over a pile of laundry, smoothing out the cracked vinyl teeth of a monstrous snake-dragon-dinosaur style beast with my fingers, folding Adam’s favorite t-shirt, flashy with the logo of the Loch Ness Monster roller coaster, when it comes to me that generally my view of things is […]

Early Monday morning on the run, I feel it full, the gnawing hunger growing in my fasted body, my stomach only a pleasing kind of empty; the gnawing hunger growing in my slowed mind, like shadows licking at the edges, making everything dim with an alarming sense of lack. Hungry, but hungry for…what? My body […]

They call him their Adam, these souls walking through the doors into the gathering place where Adam usually stands to welcome them on their way into worship, and, finding his spot blank because he has left his post for a moment, will miss him, will walk over to Kevin expressly to ask, where’s my man […]

I keep coming back to this, Adam quietly ferrying gifts out the front door, packing our cars the day we traveled to my parents’ house for our annual family Christmas, how he met me at the foot of the stairs again and again, accepting boxes and baskets from my hands with silent happiness even though […]

Before Christmas, I set aside a Friday afternoon to help Josh and Riley shop for their gifts, this a true highlight of the season for me because of the downright giddy generosity, the joy, with which they give, especially together, and every year, I finish the experience on a prayer: Lord, teach me to love […]

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 […]

“Hey, are you still praying about that stuff on our prayer board?” I hear Josh ask this of Riley as we ease in at a stoplight, on our way home from their classes.  Filtered through the fiery trees, late afternoon sunlight bathes the world in warm pinks and golds.  In the rearview mirror, I can […]

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 […]

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 […]