In the kitchen, I scoop up the end of the day in my palm–the covered, sharp tip of an insulin needle we used for Adam; an alcohol swab, still evaporating that clean, astringent smell; paper-torn wrappers.  With the other hand, I lift an abandoned cup of water–probably the one Riley set down when she finished […]

Out of the corner of my eye, I see them kneeling in front of my son, knees pressed hard into the floor right there in front of the chair where Adam sits waiting for me, glancing at his watch.  I’m too far away to hear them, but I can tell that they’re talking to him, […]

It’s an old, familiar, childhood question.  If you had just one wish, and you knew it would come true… It’s a genie question, hovering in smoke, the answer thought-whispered over snuffed out candles, wispy and curling.  Just once, it was a question of Biblical proportions, only God posed it differently, to a young king:  Ask […]

To look at her, you’d not think her mighty, carrying that slice of notebook paper folded over her fingers, brassy hair tied in two smooth knots and pinned, finally, against her head and away from her face.  She insists upon nothing in her eyes when she’s about her business, checking off important things in a […]

“Dad, will you pray with me?” Those are the first words that register, disembodied in the darkness.  Those words, maybe six of the most powerful words there are, rouse me completely from thick sleep, even though she addresses her dad.  With my eyes closed, I can see her huddled down close to him, bare-kneed, wrapping […]

We gather to pray, our chairs pulled together in hasty circles.  The whole room echoes.  We make knots–so many weak-kneed, hungry children–tangling together to sort out the kinks in our hearts.  It strikes me sometimes, how our strongest posture can look from the outside like our weakest.  But see, there’s nothing stronger than being with […]

“What’s wrong?”  I stand at the bottom of the stairs with one foot propped on the nearest step waiting for her answer, counting the bits of things–bright sock fuzz, some kind of crumb–caught in the nap of that foot-worn carpet.  One more beat of silence and I’ll run up, one answer and I’ll bend down […]

I find her note on my desk.  It’s just a yellow sticky note written in ballpoint, but the print is her own.  I can almost see her hand gripping the pen. That’s it, a small, blinding-bright effort to encourage, inspired by some of Ann Voskamp’s ideas for living given I’ve slapped up on our refrigerator door […]

A mile from school, Adam’s insulin pod starts beeping, that insistant chirp we once never imagined knowing—one two three, one two three–not an emergency yet, but a countdown to it, and just as the stress knot in my neck begins to ease. “Mom, Adam’s beeping,” Riley says, reporting, as though I can tune out the […]

In the waiting room, she reaches for my hand, lacing her long fingers through my own.  She presses her palm flat against my palm until all the lines meet, intersecting for a stretch and then contradicting, all posts and crossbeams.  Her moon eyes speak paragraphs over still lips, tightly drawn.  They are imploring blue–those eyes, […]