What Does it Feel Like to be Healed?
I have prayed for healing. I have prayed for symptoms to disappear because that is what healing meant to me, but deep within I have suspected that my prayers were somehow too narrow. Too limited. How, then, should I pray? Is true healing more than the absence of some symptom? I prayed that my boy would be healed. I prayed that food would no...
Book of Quotations: Notes from a Sickbed
I’ve been sick. For a month. I’m worn out with it. Worn out enough to have spent the last few days in bed. Worn out enough to have finally called the doctor. Having filled the prescription he gave, I can breathe again. Though I am still tired. And each breath has that ache-y, medicinal twinge suggesting that my body knows it isn’t yet...
What Happens Next?
"Mom," she asks, "What happens next in the story?" I'm distracted, brushing my teeth, checking the clock. I realize that we only have 5 minutes before we need to leave for church. It takes more than 5 minutes to strap three kids into the car. At least, it does if one of those kids is a two-year-old who processes every instruction as an...
Home At Last
That’s the name lettered over the door of the small shop. Home At Last. It makes me laugh. Somewhat bitterly, I’m afraid. On this day, we are fifteen-years married, and, to celebrate, we wander the streets of this Texas hill-country town, the fruit of our union miles away at Grammie and Granddad’s house. Sitting down to eat lunch amidst a...
A New Year
This is the view from where I sit on the eve of another year. Not literally, of course, but "literal" has never meant much to me. Literally, the view is more about scattered toys and laundry piles and cough drops (I'm trying and failing to remember a holiday season that didn't feature some virus or other). But, the real view, the...
Christmas Day
"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests." Merry Christmas, friends....