In the first few hours in the cold ER next to my suddenly-on-his-deathbed-34 year old-husband, I made no definitive plans...except one. If he didn't make it to June 19, no matter where we were at the time, I would load up our 4 children and make our way to the nearest BJ's Restaurant I could... Continue Reading →
I played in the rain with our children today. It’s been pouring for weeks, bringing rapidly rising flood waters with it every few days. The kids have been mostly quarantined inside. So today, when the sky turned dark and the clouds opened up without the presence of thunder and lightning, I ushered them outside to... Continue Reading →
“The best way I can tell you what really happened is to take you some miles away to where the Hermit of the Southern March sat gazing into the smooth pool beneath the spreading tree...For it was in this pool that the Hermit looked when he wanted to know what was going on in the... Continue Reading →
“People throw around the word hero pretty flippantly these days, but today we said goodbye to a hero in the very truest sense of the word. My uncle passed away getting re-certified to jump out of airplanes. He wasn't an adrenaline junky or an adventurer. He was a rescuer. Since 2007, he has put his... Continue Reading →
I was 16. The sun hung bright and felt impossibly near with its heat. The ground appeared to waver, distorting from steam whipping up off of scorched earth. I sat on the edge of the bed of a stranger's red truck (Where I grew up, if a truck bed was opened at a gathering, it... Continue Reading →
Friday, we focus on the sacrifice, the death. Sunday, we celebrate the fulfillment of a promise…of THE promise and the resurrection of Jesus, Who still lives. But what about the day between? What about the day between the grief and the glory? Saturday. Today. This day was a day of confusion, of sorrow, of lost-ness.... Continue Reading →
I feel like, to some very small degree, that I was prepared to live as a widow. People talk about that life. You know when you meet someone, when you marry someone, that at some point one or the other of you is going to live to see the other one die. That made sense... Continue Reading →
We’re singing “Oceans” this Sunday. It’s a song I typically lead. I’ll be brutally honest right here and tell you I’m not exactly thrilled at the prospect of singing this one again. I like to believe what I’m singing, and the thought of asking God to “take me deeper” makes me want to crawl into... Continue Reading →
In early September, in the darkness that comes between the close of one day and the start of another, Jesse awakened to his new reality. We have been walking and trudging and sprinting and schlepping through the past several months, eyes on one goal ahead of us...Jesse telling others about Jesus with his own mouth.... Continue Reading →
They rest upon my counter gleaming silver, catching light Just an ordinary object in a kitchen, so they seem But those salt and pepper shakers display less than they really mean Arriving in the mail one day with a brightly colored note, "Your Uncle Rodney wanted you to have these", my aunt’s hand once wrote.... Continue Reading →
Every Little Jot & Tittle 