Laura and I and a Ferris Wheel Laura had an emergency at work that morning, but first we–she and her husband and I– took a spin on a giant Ferris wheel, once known as a “pleasure wheel,” but today a playdate wheel. We went up, up, up… but at the top, just before the descent, […]
Dream Poem#1: Hog Stew, Krispy Kremes, and Ann Voskamp
Hog Stew, Krispy Kremes, and Ann Voskamp The quicksand tried to swallow me. Then the train came and an elephant held out his trunk. When I grasped it, it wiggled into a rainbow’d snake that flung me into the red Corvette convertible in Canadian National auto carrier #1000 graffiti’d with gifts. We snaked our […]
I Didn’t Expect
I never expected to have children. I never dreamed of a family. I didn’t play love and marriage or stuff my shirt with pillows. I did dream of caring for others. Maybe in far countries. I even used to hope I’d find an injured animal so I could take care of it. But I […]
How to Spoon Hope
She greets us at the door with shy hugs. The kids leave and return with plastic lawn chairs to supplement the tattered gold sofa. She wants us to sit. There are no windows, so we strain to see, strain to hear her heart through the rhythm of the rain as it pulses on the corrugated tin roof, crescendos and […]
Damaged Dreams and Broken Expectations
I’ve been sitting in a new pew the past few weeks. Not that there was anything wrong with the old one, the one where my husband had grown up and where we expected we might end up. Literally. But I’d started to feel restless and a little cramped. I wasn’t connecting relationally with […]
i just want summer to last
I’m sitting in a black wrought iron chair on the patio, munching a cream-cheesed cinnamon-raisin bagel. I hadn’t meant to eat a bagel. I’d meant to opt for something more healthy–like scrambled egg whites tossed with spinach and tomatoes and onions. But I’m housebreaking a new puppy, and it’s a grab-and-go day. (We swore there’d […]
still saturday: solitude
“But the inability to understand what creativeness there is in solitude, that it is somehow linked to the ‘madness of silence,’ is to deny the human spirit its vital recharge for facing the rigors of everyday life. “Solitude is choosing to be alone . . . “Solitude is to let the mind and emotions drain […]
when you’re crushed and broken
It’s just the two of us for dinner. I scrounge up some chicken, left over from the chicken-with-cherry-sauce recipe from A Taste of Laity Lodge. Only for her, I serve it plain with bottled Hawaiian sauce and no cherries and a broken breadstick with pizza sauce. She skips the asparagus. Then she trades the chicken […]
still saturday: a wordcandy poem
A WordCandy Poem Give me silence, water hope. It is time to ravel rays from ravished dreams. Steady yourself and see the length of life is decreed by nature, its depth by grace. To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle softening into butter. A thing like that can make […]
Scripture Sunday: In Your Wildest Dreams
God can do anything, you know— far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us. Ephesians 3:20 (MSG)
