This video just puddled me. Maybe it’s partly because Kaitlin died just six months before my mom, stolen from earth by the same thief. But mostly because Kaitlin looked beyond herself and her own pain. She was given a wish, and she gave it away. She painted a beautiful picture with her last […]
The Worst–and Best–Cruise Ever
I don’t remember where I found the deal, but life had gotten a bit stressful, and it seemed like a good idea. My husband wasn’t so enthusiastic, but for me there are (almost) no bounds to bonding, and his objections gave way to assent. So in the spring of 2001, we delivered our heart-sick-just-discharged-getting-better-and-much-beloved […]
Coming in Second
Once upon a time, I was a beauty queen. But I was never crowned. And no official queen portrait exists. Because I didn’t earn the title. In fact, the photo that always appears in the “parade” of past queens in the annual pageant program is of a formal portrait taken when I represented my […]
Sharing Your Faith When You Work at Home
It was one of those open-and-shut cases. The cancer sprawled through the belly. The surgeon had searched the cavity deep and wide and found no hope. He shook his head, took a few biopsies, and began the close. I’d dabbed the patient’s tears from the corners of her eyes and held her hand as […]
Richard Foster on Silence and Writing
I’ve been a Richard Foster fan for years. I’ve got the first editions of Celebration of Discipline (named by Christianity Today as one of the top 10 most influential books of the 20th century) and Freedom of Simplicity. Way back when, I led a Sunday School group through FOS—which probably amounted to simply reading aloud every […]
One bloom in my mom memory bouquet
They were probably separate Christmases, but they’re tied together to make one bloom in my mom memory bouquet… We still live in the little four-room house. I’m off on another hunt that takes me under the couch cushion, inside a chartreuse kitchen cupboard door, under the gray formica table, behind the toaster, on top of my parents’ dresser, and […]
40 Words of Lent 2014: Day 38
Is art selfish or selfless? If selfless, how can we think of it? Think of art as an icon. Think of art as a prayer. Think of art as a bodily organ. Think of art as an act of service. Word Count: 40 ~ from my notes during the opening plenary session by Gene Luen Yang titled […]
40 Words of Lent 2014: Day 37 (and a Making Manifest winner!)
Family time at the water park. Then we cut shoe patterns for Sole Hope in our hotel room. The grandgirl grimaced at the video of Ugandan children with jiggers. The next day she bought a pair of shoes for 82 dollars. Word count: 40 Today’s Reading: 1 Timothy 1 – 2 Timothy 4 NOTE: During […]
40 Words of Lent 2014: Day 36
“Poetry fills me with joy and I rise like a feather in the wind. Poetry fills me with sorrow and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge. But mostly poetry fills me with the urge to write poetry . . . ” ~Billy Collins, “The Trouble with Poetry,” in Aimless Love: New and […]
40 Words of Lent 2014: Day 35
The “one thing” each of us finds hardest to give up may be the single most significant sign to lead us to an entry door to our communion with God, if we could only recognize the importance of that choice. ~ Luci Shaw in Water my Soul: Cultivating the Interior Life Word Count: 40 Today’s […]
