You and me time, that’s what my artist friend calls the time she spends in her studio, as she’s sharing that her creativity flourishes as a collaborative expression of her relationship with God.  By you and me, she means God with her, God in her, God through her. “Oh, I just love our you and […]

On the Fridays when Josh spends the day with us, Riley, Josh, and I have conversations about what they’ll do for each other in-case-of-seizure.  They sit at the bar, our couple, their fingers interlaced, while I stand in front of them at the kitchen sink, my hands preoccupied with washing. “Now Josh,” I begin.  He […]

I sit in the hammock swing on our screened porch, waking, cradling my coffee cup in my hands, watching the steam curl and rise out of that mug toward the dark, lacy outline of the evergreen trees bordering our neighbor’s yard.  I smile gently at those trees, at the way they look right now, black […]

“Need to go upstairs,” Adam says, the very minute Kevin mentions that we should play a game together after dinner. We gather around the family table, but Adam feels no compulsion to stay, may in fact find the relational atmosphere a bit overwhelming.  When we ask him questions during the meal, Adam puts down his […]

In the new, pink light, Kevin and I set out on a run, past trees covered in bridal blossoms like lace trailing down, limbs cupping silken petals in shades of plum, and bushes tossing lemon-yellow blooms on the ground in front of them.  It’s early yet, and Spring has sprung. I can tuck my head […]

My body groans this morning, acutely I feel it crumbling, as Kevin and I head out for an early run, searching for renewal, and not just of muscles and tissues and cells.  Be transformed by the renewing of your mind, the apostle Paul wrote, and as our feet begin to tap staccato, I remember the […]

At the end of Adam’s dinnertime prayer—thank you, God, for lemon chicken; thank you, for green beans, always specific gratitude for the foods he likes to eat and complete silence on the foods he doesn’t, uttered in his deep, pausing voice over our table, our steaming plates of food, our linked hands–tonight, Riley carries on, […]

In the early morning, Adam and I sit waiting again beside the waterfall-on-a-wall in the oral surgeon’s office, me with my scrubbed face and the early hour puffing around my eyes, he with his hair still snarled in the back where he always forgets to brush. He did not complain when I wrote our schedule […]

Saturday afternoon, I twist in a hammock chair on the back porch, one foot tucked up and the other dangling, a book splayed open in my lap. Spinning my way through a story, here and not here, I rest in the travel lands while Kevin dozes beside me, Kindle rising and falling on his chest. […]

My first thought, when Kevin casually mentioned the coming rain, the bone-cold breeze, the silent freezing night, was that the blooms would die. I peered out the back window, watching the pear tree dance, decked in blooms like a lacy bride, pure, new, completely vulnerable to the fury of unvanquished Winter. All week, I had […]