All told, it was ten years of hard living. There was a future-emptying diagnosis, a move, a new job, a long-failing ministry, a chronic illness, an adoption that unraveled, a brain tumor, severe financial strain, incapacitating loneliness. It felt like too much sometimes, but it was all we knew: one trouble compounding another. And another. […]
The heat of summer in our little corner of the world has turned everything stale. The trees are beginning to turn, but I think that’s more from heat than from the coming of fall. My husband and I often take our kids to ride on a local bike path on the edge of town. Several small bridges take the bike trail […]
The first time I saw him, I was still in high school. This isn’t a high school sweetheart story, because he didn’t remember my name when I bumped into him a year later. No, the first time we met, I was the only high school member of a college worship team making the two-hour drive […]
I don’t know where the book came from. I didn’t buy it, don’t remember either of my kids opening it at Christmas or birthdays. Probably, it sneaked in with a pile of hand-me-down books from a neighbor or friend. I rarely say no to books anyway. However it got here, the book about pet monsters was perched […]
It started with an innocent comment at a family gathering in our home about whether or not we smelled a natural gas leak, and it ended with me perched on a stool at 1:30 in the morning trying to pry the carbon monoxide detector down from the wall to be sure it was working. I […]
On December 13, 2014, I wrote the following words in my journal in the midst of an excruciating battle with bitterness and pain: I’m realizing that He has loved me all along. Has been with me every day, especially the dark ones. He never abandons His children. He will always keep His promise of His […]
Janie and I met as teenagers. She walked with me through my infertility, and I supported her through her years of singleness. We both became ministry wives, then mothers. Janie seemed to be made for mothering. She was the one I turned to when my son was little and I was unsure how to deal with […]
One of my most prayed prayers is one for patience. Whispered, demanded, wept—it’s something I pray when my sin is pressing closer than the sins of others (though I often think it’s the other way around). When trying to fill my grocery cart while my kids bicker with one another, I grab items from the […]
I made too much chicken. That’s how it started. Too much chicken. As I cooked dinner last night, I thought through my day, mentally adding things to tomorrow’s to-do list, stepping out of the kitchen periodically to address sibling squabbles in the next room. Moving between tasks, I prepared twice as much chicken as our […]
Last night I laid awake most of the night. I told you that. I drifted from one troubled dream to the next, and every moment of lucidity was spent praying for you. I know you well enough to know you were awake, too. Today was a hard day for you. And because you are so […]
