“Family worship” is a term we use a bit loosely for the dinner table devotions we enjoy as a family each night. My husband usually reads some Scripture, one of the kids prays for a neighbor or someone from church, and we all sing the Doxology together. The highlight for my two boys is to…
following Christ
Rhythms of Remembering
My alarm clock was pretty rude this morning. Five-thirty is pitch dark. The remains of an all-night thunderstorm hung about the air, making my bed the obvious first choice. As my feet hit the floor, as I hunted for my slippers and shrugged on a long cardigan, as I headed to the coffee pot in…
Music Lessons
I picked out a tune on my grandparents’ old Wurlitzer when I was quite small, plucking the keys to make a melody I recognized. I could hear harmonies before I knew what they were, so my parents signed me up for music lessons when I was seven. I learned basics with one teacher, then switched…
We Don’t Need What We Think We Need
I sat in the optometrist’s office with a searing headache behind my eyes. That’s partly why I was there. The more pressing reason was that I couldn’t see very well. Everything had gone foggy a week before. No matter how I tried to blink the fog away, it clouded my vision as though I were…
Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop
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….
More, Not Less
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…
Our Eyes Are On You
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…
Lord, Don’t (Just) Give Me Patience
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…
Dinnertime Devotions and Gospel Hope
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…
To the Friend Who is Hurting
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…