Now We Are Awake
For years, my children have sung the same old tired song. It goes like this: it isn't fair, it isn't fair, it isn't fair. I used to argue with them. I tried banning those words, altogether. But for the past year or so, I have said only this: In our house, we don't do fair. We do love. Do you want fairness or do you want love? I heard the...
For Everything There is a Season
It is difficult to know where to begin. It feels as if, together with my family, I have lived whole lifetimes since I last wrote in this space. We prayed for rescue, but Shawn did not need to be rescued. Perhaps those prayers were for ourselves. So many of you prayed with us. So many of you wrote words of love and encouragement. You delivered...
These Words Are Still True
"Whether we speak of poems or paintings or places, all art acknowledges an absence and dreams of something other, something more. Art is the material form of hope." - Christie Purifoy, Roots and Sky I did not really know what those words meant when I wrote them. Today, my family is confronted by a terrible grief and a great absence. My...
The Things We Make
My youngest child is three years old, and every day she paints. She paints lions and footprints. She paints me, and she paints rivers, roads, and bugs. For a while, she painted without giving much attention to the finished product. She would paint until holes appeared in the paper and then move on to the next. I would make a great show of...
New Website, New Book, New Year (+ A Gift For You)
Here at Maplehurst, 2015 ended with a solid month of rain, fog, and strangely warm weather. 2016 has dawned with sunshine and blue skies. On this, the first day of a new year, it is easy for me to believe what has always been true: God's compassions never fail. They are new every morning. "New" is the drumbeat of creation. It is the song of...
If We Make It Through December
Each December I think it will be different. This will be the year I shake my winter melancholy. This will be the year my delight grows day by day. These are days of ornaments and sugar cookies and twinkling lights. Aren’t they supposed to be happy? But this year is much like every other year. The ornaments shatter, the cookies crumble, and...