“I love you.” He says it slowly, the way he says everything, but lifting the word you, as if in emphasis.  It’s not enough just to fling the words into the air above her head and walk away.  He knows this.  Purposefulness has been a recent goal.  So instead, Adam bends his lean frame toward the […]

Twinkle lights cast warm light over their cheeks, their tawny skin, their sun-gold hair.  The summer breeze lifts long, errant strands—mermaid-streaked deep maroon-purple, steel blue.  The girls slide their thumbs over their foreheads, corraling without thinking.  As the day fades along the edges of the dinner hour and the five of us gather on the […]

There’s only ever been one perfect love; only one that didn’t come out all lopsided, with smudges all over the edges. Time races up behind me and I have no choice but to microwave the butter I forgot to take out ahead.  I need it to cream, and ice-cold butter doesn’t cream.  I unfold the […]

Today, this extravagant Gift: Gently, he traces my cheekbone with the edge of his thumb, just lightly.  It is a simple, wordless gesture, so powerfully warm as to thaw the edges of the day. “I know,” I say, “I have a nasty bump there,” thinking immediately of the blemish on my cheek, red and tender […]

It only takes a moment for things to crumble. At day’s end, twilight throws last rosy beams across the kitchen table, lighting up flecks of glitter melted into the clear coat years ago during some school project, making Riley’s golden flyaways shine like a gossamer crown faintly visible on her forehead.  She has just finished […]

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 […]

I love everyone. Riley rainbow-writes the words on her hand in letters that look faded against her skin, some big, some small, some crooked where the pens slip into the valleys between her fingers.  It’s a God thing to write love into surfaces, into souls, into the tissue of our hands, but for her 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 […]

Sometimes life strips us clean of words, and we sit together, quiet.  And maybe it’s that way so we’ll stop to listen. We walk through the rain and into the funeral chapel, gathering damp hugs on our way through the door.  We sit first, and then we stand, winding in long lines past photographs and […]

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 […]