To look at her, you’d not think her mighty, carrying that slice of notebook paper folded over her fingers, brassy hair tied in two smooth knots and pinned, finally, against her head and away from her face.  She insists upon nothing in her eyes when she’s about her business, checking off important things in a […]

I have moments I collect like treasure–the moments I never thought I’d see, and this is one of them: I rush in late in the middle of a song and slide into a seat next to Kevin, picking up the melody, letting the words gather in my mind. What heights of love, what depths of […]

They sit waiting–my children and this party of their best friends, a huddled, cross-legged, patchwork group in costumes as vibrant and varied as they.  Even with the house lights dim, I see the startling glint of silver sequins, a neon vest, leotards and athletic jerseys.  I slip into a chair and just smile, holding my […]

I put a damp cloth in Adam’s hands and point toward the bathtub.  “Go ahead, wipe it clean, now.” “We don’t have to clean the bathroom,” he says to me, because he doesn’t like scrubbing bathtubs any more than most of the rest of us.  And that’s his new thing, as if life spins on […]

I can hear him beside me and his voice is reverently light, soft and piercing.  But the thing is:  Adam never just sings.  He worships. We sit beneath the trees when the sun is soft and dying.  A breeze blows through–a Spirit-wind, and I hear him quietly crooning, oh the grace reaching out for me.  We’re […]

I find her note on my desk.  It’s just a yellow sticky note written in ballpoint, but the print is her own.  I can almost see her hand gripping the pen. That’s it, a small, blinding-bright effort to encourage, inspired by some of Ann Voskamp’s ideas for living given I’ve slapped up on our refrigerator door […]

A mile from school, Adam’s insulin pod starts beeping, that insistant chirp we once never imagined knowing—one two three, one two three–not an emergency yet, but a countdown to it, and just as the stress knot in my neck begins to ease. “Mom, Adam’s beeping,” Riley says, reporting, as though I can tune out the […]

I don’t know what she first thought when she saw those shoes, empty and waiting carefully, almost in anticipation just there in front of the chair, but I know she recognized them as her father’s.  The knowledge that he would surely need them soon arrested her progress, stopped her cold in the middle of certain […]

“I didn’t even realize he was wearing his sweatpants,” I say to my friend, gesturing with one finger toward my son, over to the back of the auditorium where Adam now paces, ankles showing blank below lanky black, just above those bruised-up tennis shoes he likes.  I’m not even sure that the elastic on the […]

It’s hard to explain what it’s like, watching a child slowly connect, as though another sidelined piece of the puzzle has suddenly locked into place; it’s hard to describe the shape of that grin, the one that knows the sweet taste of grace, but here it is, for us: He sits cross-legged in the center […]