I confess that when she comes to get me, I do not want to get up. I just picked up my book—Dorothea Frank’s Plantation, and I have precious few moments to mind-leap on down to the Lowcountry and shut out the world.  Every time this author punctuates a sentence with the word yanh, I smell the […]

I wish I had thought to take a picture of them, sitting there with me.  Me, all hulled out and bare—wearing my soft pants and no makeup, because with them I can.  And them—six of my close friends–using their smartphones (of all things) and their words and their hands that can’t be still in the […]

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 […]

I walk in, and she sits alone on the third row—she, only here to be with; she, who forgets how to breathe when being means there’s just too much to absorb.  She has the courage of a lion, and most don’t even know.  A movie flashes large on the screen at the front of the room, but I […]

We sit in a restaurant not far away, because she’s tired and I’m tired, and it need not take long to get home.  Time comes and we sit down, having carefully protected the hour.  She begins by announcing a blemish, because our hearts have been friends an uncountable age, and we see no need for glossing […]

She could not have known about the day, its prickly criticism and thick heat, its challenge and pursed lips and ungracious attitude.  She could not have absorbed its unkind words.  She could not have known how it all felt gray, in spite of the sun, or how many times I wondered why am I doing this […]

Sometimes from the start of a day a dull ache builds, spreading slowly from the curve of my back well into the sharp edges of my shoulders.  It is the sore feel of self dying, the good ache of need, the one meant to remind me that God accomplishes and satisfies (Deuteronomy 8:3).  But the truth […]

On the way home from school, we ramble down a country road sandwiched between two busy thoroughfares. We leave the highway still feeling jostled by the cars and trucks that whizzed past while we waited to turn and wander down just this little stretch of peace before we turn again into the chaos.  I always smile […]

I sit maybe five feet away, watching women I think of as friends clumped together, laughing.  They touch each other’s arms and smile, a glossy photograph of friendship.  And for a moment, I see only lip gloss and accessories. I forget that these images are a mirage, an illusion, a fashionable scam. I had tried […]

In the morning, this is on my daughter’s gifts list: 83. the ladies coming over, and I look around the room, and in the half-light I can almost still see my sisters sitting in the chairs and cross-legged on the floor, never really leaving me. The friendships of women are no light, temporary thing. I […]