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 […]

I call it my spot, that place right beside where I seem to melt into him like a carefully sculpted, invisibly bonded part; that place I best know how to fit.  It is a place carved in the shape of me. In the early morning, this is how we pray:  He reaches for me, and I […]

“1,2,3…Okay, Mom—I’m going to count how many people signed my yearbook.  Let’s see how many I have.” And she begins again, confident that she has my attention.  “Let’s see, I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8…and here I have 9, 10, 11, 12,”she says, counting the ones who wrote words and the […]

I walk in the room and see Love: Tears leave slow trails on her cheeks and he leans over her, catching the drops with one finger.  He slides his finger along her cheek bones, drawing wet crosses over the smooth, tender skin as she cries. She weeps quietly, the way she used to live.  “I’ll […]

Motherhood is an emptying. And the pouring out, with all it’s awkward splats and splashes, really starts the day God drops the seed of a child, planting a soul in our most cavernous places, claiming the soil of us for His own harvest.  The latching on of new life breaks walls, bruises tissue, draws blood. […]

Over lunch, we talk of how we first imagined ourselves as mothers, smiling down at our fingers. I’ve always longed to be the Proverbs 31 woman.  She is clothed with strength and dignity, Word says.  She can laugh at the days to come.  I don’t know, but somehow the unmanicured edges of my fingernails seem […]