What’s Black and White with Grace All Over?
So some of our kid volunteers had never been around African-American kids before and they were nervous, I could tell. But I was thrilled at their willingness to venture out of their comfort zone and experience kids much like themselves with hopes and dreams and talents and smiles. Kids with energy and God-love and a […]
Storing Up
We raced against the rain on Sunday, baling and pulling and lifting and heaving and stacking and storing hay. Hearts pumping, whole bodies sweating, muscles burning, the heavens began trickling and I prayed for just a few more minutes of grace so our harvest would not get soaked. Because wet hay is hazardous hay. Not […]
Full. Filled.
We hugged after church and I saw the touch of wet in her eye. More, I saw the longing. Longing to be heard, to be understood, to be held in friendship where hearts touch deeper places. We two have traveled similar paths through life of brokenness, adoption, special needs. She’s smart, pretty, effervescent, articulate, and […]
Hay!
Farmers have been frenzied all week. The first week of July is our first week of warm with no rain forecast. So the equipment buzzes in the fields all around cutting hay. Swaths of grass lay on the ground, waiting, turning tan. They wait for sun to dry so farmers can bale. Hay wagons wait […]
Mothering Mother, Final
Roses. I started writing about roses in the car because I would speak at her funeral and I wanted to speak about roses. My earliest memories of Mom were of her tending tea roses with those flowered white cotton gloves and pruning shears. She’d cut the dead away each spring giving the bush room to […]
Mothering Mother, Part 4
God helped me see Mom’s wounds—her scabbed but still infected soul sores. I heard her story reverberate in my brain. How she was a tomboy who climbed apple trees and scraped her knees and ate green fruit till she got sick. How she was the one to whom everyone turned for help, for solace. How […]
Mothering Mother, Part 3
Whenever ways of relating are challenged and changed, expect waves. We all love what is known because it is familiar. And even if the known is unhealthy—even if the known hurts, we tend to stay the course, hoping for change. The status quo of my relationship with Mom followed a few rules: Do as I […]
Mothering Mother, Part 2
Again, a rather lengthy segment. Perhaps take a break for coffee . . . or English tea? I had lost all I had ever hoped to find. The man I loved and had led Bible studies and church worship with for years, he abandoned me two weeks before Christmas, right after we cut down our […]