“I need help, please,” Adam says, thrusting his nightlight toward me. “It’s not working.” It can be a whole new year, the midnight sky exploding in colorful stars, manmade light raining toward the earth with sparkling sound, and we can still be on the ground feeling damaged. He draws one long leg up in a […]

The moment I return from my morning walk, Adam starts to move, like a pinball set in motion by the click of the front door. I hear his footsteps, purposeful and solid, before I actually see him, and just as I walk into the room, he snatches a sticky note from the edge of the […]

It can be easy, in a whisper, to thank the gift without thanking the Giver. It sounds ridiculous to say it out loud, but in the evening, sitting cozy while the darkness gathers outside, we admit this to each other. I fold my legs up in the chair, thinking of the way my gratitude sometimes […]

When we discover that Adam needs glasses, even his eye doctor has his doubts. “If he’ll wear them…” The doctor says, drawing out the ellipsis as he slowly extends the prescription in my direction. Oh, he’ll wear them, I’m thinking, watching the doctor’s back as he walks away, but it’ll take work. I snap a […]

“So for some reason, this verse made me think of you,” my friend says, flicking her finger back and forth on the edge of an index card as we settle onto her porch beneath warm party lights glowing in the cloudy afternoon and ferns gently swaying. I cradle the coffee cup in my hands and […]

Monday morning, and I have a shorthanded list: laundry, laundry, laundry, empty trash cans, clean hand towels in all the bathrooms. I move in that weekday flurry, recycled shopping bags for the trash cans rattling in my hands, having just come home from dropping Riley and Adam at day camp, with a plan to spend […]

Weary fingers, mine, and tangled in her hair, weaving, weaving, weaving the wet strands in thick ropes down her back. For at least fifteen minutes every day, Riley and I become the reflection of generations of others before us–their angled arms, their busy fingers, their bodies bending, tending. Riley, still and waiting, tilts her face […]

Early morning quiet and steam dances and curls over the cup, and I sit listening. The many sounds of silence include the voice of God, and His Word always changes things. I scribble the date in my journal and begin to write, glancing back to the Bible still open in my lap. The cover and […]

On the other side of a migraine, my Riley begins to sing: From the ash I am born again Forever safe in the Savior’s hands I stop folding and let the warm towel fall from my fingers, listening. She missed worship today, let her head fall like a rock on my shoulder during the opening […]

“There will be a lot of hugs today,” she says, drawing me in with arms growing long enough to catch the world.  Her brassy hair falls against my cheek and lightly tickles my hands as I press them into her back.  I count her ribs, the knobby vertebrae in her spine.  She feels strong, solid, […]