It’s 2016. The scent of brewing coffee wafts through my home. The front door is open. My dining room table is ready with my favorite coffee mugs, sugar and cream, spoons, and extra chairs in case the numbers are better than I hoped. I’d been longing for some kind of regular meeting with the women…
Waiting
Kansas Via Ethiopia and Stories I Didn’t Write
Sometimes God cancels your good plans to accomplish His best plan. I had that thought while decorating our Christmas tree this weekend. From a box of tissue wrapped ornaments, I pulled a delicate wooden ornament painted red and green and yellow. “Melkam Gena” it said, which is Amharic for Merry Christmas. I held the ornament for…
When God Takes His Time
I started praying for healing about fourteen years ago. I started praying for a baby twenty years ago. Of all the things I have prayed for in this life, those two things have topped my prayer list the longest. With an autoimmune disease that has only fairly recently been tamed, I’ve spent many agonizing nights…
Remember
The other night, I curled up with a book in what my kids call “Mom’s Corner” of the couch. We bought our gray sectional last year because of that corner. Well, technically we bought it because our fifteen-year-old sofa was just about to fall apart. But, I sat in the corner of the floor display…
Very Good Gifts
We pushed back and forth on the patio swing. He fights the lilt because it gives him a little bit of motion sickness, but after all these years together he knows that I will always force the swing to move if I’m sitting on it. Otherwise, it’s just a chair. Our boys run around the backyard…
More than Many Sparrows
“Is the Lord enough for you?” he asked me. It was late, nearing midnight, and rather than sleeping, my husband and I were sitting in the living room discussing some current challenges in our life. And by “discussing,” I mean that I was loudly airing my frustrations and expressing the awful truth that I did not…
A Thousand Times, Yes
I was sitting at a table in a Starbucks seven hours away from home. We’d come under the pretense of wanting coffee, but the real reason was we needed to feel normal for an hour. After ordering, we crowded tightly around the table. Our seven-year-old was watchful as I gently pulled the week-old baby from…
There’s Blessing in the Longing
I want to run away from these words. I hit “publish” so you wouldn’t feel alone when your hopes rise and fall in a tumble of confusing might-have-beens. It’s embarrassing to admit after thirteen years of one-lined tests that sometimes I still find myself entertaining a glimmer of hope that my situation might change. It’s…
I Prayed for Healing. He Answered with His Presence.
These are slow summer days, stretching long at the ends from first light to last. We drink them in deep swallows, savoring the absence of hurried schedules. We sleep later than normal and wear pajamas longer than we should. The hours unspool without our notice or care. It seems a luxury. I’ve not had such…
Story of the Song: I’ll Never Let You Go
I am a chronic worrier. I worry about the past. I worry about the present. And of course, I worry about the future. Mostly, I worry about what might happen. When I was a kid, I took it upon myself to constantly remind my little sister to stay close when we were in stores or restaurants or…