I walk in from my sweaty work, the pruning shears heavy in one gloved hand, the bottoms of my bare feet stinging with the heat of the sidewalk, the brick steps. Finally, I couldn’t watch the ruined blooms weigh the branches any longer, nor let them continue leaching away the sweet goodness the tiny, emergent […]

Help.  I write the word in plum today, and in the curve of the e, the marker squeaks against the whiteboard.  Help really isn’t the right word.  It’s as inadequate as the word serve for describing what we do for God.  Learn would be the better verb if this schedule were truly about accuracy, but from my son’s […]

I recognize the symbol immediately–the faded rainbow lines tattooed onto the back of her neck, the needle-pieced, needle-etched shape of just one part of a global puzzle.  The top edge of her taffy-pink scrubs hides most of the word beneath, but I can barely make out the upper third of the black script letter ‘A.’ […]

I really don’t know what to say anymore, she says to me, and I understand, because when you say everything true and it doesn’t seem to make a difference you finally run out of words.  They drain and fall away, leaving only echoes like bits of fluttering ash.  And in the aftermath of a wordy, difficult […]

So, I’m sitting here in tears, can bearly see the screen for the flow of grace, like the soft rain falling just beyond the window.  I count gifts all the time, because it’s one of the most powerful ways I know to keep these dim eyes glued on Truth, and this one gusts in to fill […]

Psst…I have rediscovered the secret to mothering without limits.  And just in time for Mother’s Day. Sometimes in the middle of a meal, she puts down her fork, a thin tink against scalloped edge.  The silver flashes, a change in the light just barely perceived, as she loosens her grip.  Oh my, the things that happen to […]

https://instagram.com/p/1yb3PWtTXa/ At every event, Adam stands too close.  I have to keep drawing him back to me.  Sometimes I hook an arm around his waist, sometimes I just catch his eyes with mine and say, come here.  But he bounces forward, right up to that white-chalk line on the grass, and it’s not his turn […]

We wander down the grocery aisle, me with my head buried in a list, Zoe pushing the cart, Riley walking just behind, quietly trying to breathe. Zoe reaches toward me with her eyes.  I feel the gaze grab hard, and I look up and toward my daughter.  Zoe sucks in her belly and stiffens her […]

Walking behind him, I can see clearly that his jeans only just reach his ankles.  The nurse talks over her shoulder—okay, follow me and then some small talk about the weather, the red file folder jutting out, an extension of her hand that messes up all the angles.  She fills the space with words so light […]

“I always eat slowly right before school.”  She says it quietly, when she knows I stand listening, when it’s just the two of us in the room. Two days back to school, and every morning Riley comments that she’s cold and wraps her legs with a blanket.  She sometimes tries to stand so that I […]