Stinging words curl through the grapevine like searing smoke, and I gasp, suffocating.  I am distracted by a black storm, by the flicking tongue of a squint-eyed snake bent on spreading its own dark poison.  The deception threatens the fixing of my eyes.  Except. Except that God is my Father.  And He hasn’t left me […]

Psst…I have rediscovered the secret to mothering without limits.  And just in time for Mother’s Day. Sometimes in the middle of a meal, she puts down her fork, a thin tink against scalloped edge.  The silver flashes, a change in the light just barely perceived, as she loosens her grip.  Oh my, the things that happen to […]

Zoe grabs my hand before I turn. “Wait.” We stand on the threshold looking out at the world.  Clouds wrap thick, dove-gray over the warmth of the sky, until all sight takes on a stormy cast.  Winter lingers, and I want to reach out and touch the knobby buds on the branches of the tree in […]

“I always eat slowly right before school.”  She says it quietly, when she knows I stand listening, when it’s just the two of us in the room. Two days back to school, and every morning Riley comments that she’s cold and wraps her legs with a blanket.  She sometimes tries to stand so that I […]

This auditorium has different lines than the one in which we usually worship.  Pews make up the rows instead of the moveable interlocking chairs with which we’re so familiar, and something makes the room feel broad.  The moment we push quietly in, there’s the impression of red velvet, though the seating arrangment feels spacious and […]

In the middle of the afternoon, when the sun burns so hot we can almost see the scorching heat and the grass curls brown and crackles beneath our bare feet, we eat peaches that taste of sunshine.  The sticky juice runs down our chins.  We spoon up blueberries dripping with sweet milk and push out […]

Well okay, not just the holidays.  I can’t ignore the resounding, soul-altering Comment:  This is not just for now. We linger, just souls pouring, and in those moments, walls fall.  The thunderous quake, the crashing of ugly pretense pushed down, is something I feel, something that shakes Heaven maybe, while here, our voices softly offer […]

Morning comes and we hear the sound of the ocean, the crash of waves. “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of that sound,” Kevin says, fresh from sleep.    Almost all week, we’ve kept the door open to hear the sea, and I keep listening to the Spirit reminding me that the voice of […]

Lay it down.  That’s what you do. You press it in His hands hard the first moment you smell the rain.  Don’t wait to surrender it. Cover yourself good, wrap up with Him, spend more time there, instead of less. Lay it down right then, and ask the people who love you to stand with […]

“Mom, I need you to pray with me about something.” It’s the first thing she says to me—she who is both daughter and sister by grace, she standing framed by the car window, the afternoon sun making her hair all blazing light.  The breeze rushes in, stealing the heat. I smile, nodding.  “Okay.  What shall […]