On the porch in the early morning and the light all new, I lift my hand in the air, bending my fingers into the sign for love.  And Adam, looking through the window as he leaves for school, tilts his head, studying the gesture.  He looks at his own hand as Kevin backs out in […]

In the morning, on the way to school, this is His nudge for me: You need to touch your daughter.   So I reach over and take one of her hands in one of mine, steering the car with the other.  Zoe doesn’t look at me, but she squeezes gently, running her thumb back and forth […]

I walk into the kitchen from the garage, carrying an armful of things—a bag, a few books, a coffee mug someone left behind—on my way to distribute these and consider the afternoon climb, and one of my daughters presses into me, draping the now dangling legs, grasping me solid, clinging to me with now enfolding […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]