I pulled a loaf of sourdough bread from the oven and popped it onto the cooling rack before getting out a blank greeting card and pondering what to write in it. I didn’t know my new neighbors’ names, so after jotting down our names and phone numbers on the inside of the card, I simply […]
I’ve long used January 1st as the day I’m going to get my life together. New diet? Clean slate starts January 1st. Exercise plan? I’ll begin on the first of the year. Keep the Tupperware cabinet from throwing plastic containers at me every time I open it? Organization will commence on the first day of […]
Yesterday, I opened my Bible to the passage in Hebrews 12 I’m studying with my Bible study group, and I read it a few times before closing my Bible and thinking, “Well, that felt a little pointless.” At 5:30 a.m., my brain was foggy, my thoughts were tangled up with both the events of the […]
In the afternoons, I spend more than an hour sitting in two different carpool lines to pick up my kids. Living in a rural area, one of those lines is flanked by fields. Cotton on one side, soybeans on the other. This afternoon, I rolled down the windows in my van and let the breeze […]
I remember what I was wearing the first time I held each of my children. Not hospital gowns, for my kids didn’t come to me that way. With my oldest, I wore a black blouse with white stitching around the neck and arms. I had a short, angled bob with blonde highlights at the time. […]
Someone asked me recently, “How do we remain faithful to the Lord when the world is just so distracting?” Without saying it, I knew this conversation was about input. Between my phone, computer, podcast app, and television, I can get to the end of a day and wonder what in my life fed my faithfulness […]
Summer is loosening its grip on things. It’s still hot down here in southern Missouri—over 90 degrees today—but you can tell that the air is different. The humidity has drained away, leaving a still-warm breath that crackles now instead of steaming. It’s our first sign that things are shifting. I took my usual morning walk […]
I have a recurring dream that I’m driving through my hometown looking for a coffee shop that doesn’t exist. If you know me personally, you know how apropos this dream is. On the hunt for a mythical coffee shop in a town I love? That sounds about right. In this dream, I make turn after […]
A few years ago, my mom was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Between the day the tumor was discovered and the day it was excised from her head, she had to wait about six weeks. Living in another state, I called often to see how she was doing, to see if the mercury at the […]
If coming up with excuses not to do things was a marketable skill, I’d have the best-looking resumé around. Take laundry, for instance. I never have more dishes to wash, books to read, shows to watch, or emails to return than when a mountain of clean laundry is piled on my bed waiting for assimilation […]
