This four-lane road, the last main thoroughfare before Adam and I get to school, snakes about in hills and curves sometimes tightly compressed and sometimes stretched and rising.  It’s a good analogy for life, this drive, for the way we all get pushed and pressed, the way a day can feel like a long, blind […]

I laugh in disbelief.  It is the initial sputtering sound of my mind and heart agreeing, I believe, help me in my unbelief, which is what I feel right now, even if my lips have yet to utter the prayer, as I laugh out loud over the mess of how-in-the-world splayed out in front of […]

In the late afternoon, I talk to Zoe on the phone, stretching my legs out in front of me, craning my neck toward the window to savor that beautiful golden hue that becomes the light at near-finish. Zoe and I will meander over miles of thoughts, sharing a pilgrim feast while I hold on my […]

At the end of the day, while the lights still twinkle in the living room, I crawl into bed and sigh. Few moments feel as satisfying as this one. If energy sparkles in jars—we have this treasure in jars of clay, I’m still radiant, even if I feel as though I have turned up empty. […]

In the late afternoon, while I stand in the kitchen strategizing, with ingredients for four different meals sizzling or simmering or slicing under the knife, with mixing bowls and crumb dotted small appliance parts gathering at the sink, I realize I have run out of spoons, and I don’t mean the kind I use for […]

Dumbbells gripped in hand, lifted over me like the weight that knots my neck, I remember thinking only of what will be next, after this. I used to plot it out by the hour, how I’d manage to do my way through the morning and into the afternoon. And then, and then, and then. How […]

As long as I lay down and drink rivers of water, I can avoid the spinal headache, that thunderous, gripping madman storming through my mind bent on dropping me to my knees.  It broods, heavy, hiding behind some banded muscle with its club lifted, daring me to move. This, then, is the valley. From here, […]

In the beginning, nothing.  I stand at the edge of a wide, blank canvas.  From the street, as the first light cracks open the sky, I only see a broad, smooth, sandy plain, and beyond this, a dazzling sheet of silver glass.  For a number of days, I disconnect everything and step away, wiping it […]

Early evening, and already I feel splintered and scattered and sore from carrying the day.  It has been one of those—the kind of day that wakes me before the sun, pressing into me in the emptied hours, and then sends me chasing time and late for everything; the kind of day in which, right from […]

I love wide, open spaces, those places that could never be arm-measured, that overflow conceivable depth and stretch further than sight; spilling over, covering completely, unbound, unheld, uncaptured. So today, because I need reminders, God sends us in a different direction, turning left on a road instead of the usual right, and this just as I […]