91Apr 18, 2014
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 […]
92Feb 7, 2014
In the last fifteen minutes before we rush off to school, I gather her hair in my fingers, smoothing the strands with my thumbs. I trace the unseen bumps and grooves along her scalp and map them in my mind, the geography of her, the feel. I know the landscape by heart. Before I can […]
93Jan 31, 2014
Today, just this:It sounds like a simple thing, like frivolity scattered over a day, like something a mother says before she sends her daughter out to make a presentation of herself: Remember to smile. But it’s just this the Spirit whispers to me, just these three words planted in the middle of an afternoon, just […]
94Aug 9, 2013
I bring my children home in the afternoon, as the sun beats hot on the pavement, and the one talks so quickly the words stick to each other as they pass through her lips. She has stories and I was like and then questions and what are we and then she fills in the space by […]
95May 10, 2013
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. […]
96Apr 5, 2013
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 […]
97Sep 7, 2012
Clouds the deepest gray, hovering close, and I gather myself into the van to retrieve my children, preparing for the storm. It will rain soon, and hard. I can smell it. And I never have enough for this part of the day. Honestly, I laugh and sometimes cry whenever I hear that someone thinks I […]
98May 18, 2012
I live my life on an unpredictable sea. I’m guessing, but I think maybe you do too. Storms come without warning, and I fly overboard, plunged beneath the swells. Mother’s Day, and I sit at the table with Adam while Kevin puts the finishing touches on lunch–the beef stroganoff that has been simmering in the […]
99Apr 13, 2012
I’m back from a run, my pulse still elevated, sweat dripping. “Mom? You’re sweaty.” Riley’s voice rises from the living room, where she sits waiting on me, her pencil moving over a workbook in her lap. Before I leave, every run, she asks me where I’ll be running, rehearses the steps with me street by […]
100Mar 3, 2012
It’s the little things that help us choose joy, like Saturday mornings with no where to go. We have been so busy with Upward basketball lately that we’ve missed those slow, lazy beginnings when Kevin and I sleep in, take coffee upstairs, and sip and talk, and our kids curl up in the chairs in […]