I was twenty-nine when the pain started. It was subtle. Just a little soreness in my low back that began waking me up at night. But as the weeks turned to months, the pain increased steadily, growing from a flicker to a blaze that burned all night. Unable to sleep, I walked the floors in…
psalms
Make Me a Tree
The tulip trees in my backyard need to be trimmed. There’s a branch growing against our detached carport, and it’s pushing the shingles off the roof. I have measured my life in the blooms on those trees—nineteen years in this house and nineteen turns of the calendar. Nineteen springs, summers, falls, and winters charting the…
The Goodness Grid
One of my favorite things about the book of Psalms is the room given for biblical complaint. In our modern sensibilities, we waffle between respectfully questioning God for His mysterious ways and raising our fists in anguish and frustration. We know that anger feels wrong, so we fight it. But immediate acceptance seems completely out…
Encircled, Enclosed, Squeezed In
The longest my husband and I have ever been apart is eleven days. He went on a mission trip to Malaysia many years ago, and my young son and I spent most of our time counting down the days until we were all together again. I struggled to sleep at night while William was on…
I Lift Up My Eyes to the Fields
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…
Sometimes We Forget He Loves Us
Sometimes I forget that God loves me. Or, to be honest, I choose not to believe that He does. I look at my daily failures, at my favored sins of pride and anger—and I think that I must be such a disappointment to God. Yes, He saved me, but look at what a mess I…
What Heals a Broken Heart
I tugged my son’s hand as we shuffled slowly toward his bedroom. He never wants to nap but always needs one. In true three-year-old fashion, he stamped his foot, pulled his hand away, crossed his arms over his chest and declared: “I not want to nap!” I responded with my regular mother lecture: “You need…
A Poem on Guarding Your Heart
I’ve been trying to post a bit of poetry around here lately. Admittedly, I write lyrics for songs far more than for poetry, but sometimes the words come across better read aloud rather than sung. Lately I’ve been thinking through Psalm 1 and the caution given in the way we approach sin. First we see…
God’s Sovereignty is Your Pillow
There are 132 tiles covering the ceiling in my bedroom. It’s an old house, and when the addition was built several decades ago, the homeowners thought it prudent to tile some of the ceilings. Six of those 132 tiles still bear water stains from the spring of 2015 when we discovered our roof leaked. And…
He Will Be Strong in Your Weakness
When I took the stage, I was one hundred percent confident in my message. My new boots pinched a bit as I climbed the steps to the piano, but I was certain of the words I would speak, sure that the melodies wrapped around the truth of God’s goodness to us in suffering were the…