The Mix of Mother’s Day Emotions
On the cusp of this Mother’s Day, I remember my worst Mother’s Day. Sometimes, I still wake in a sweat, heart pounding, reaching for the phone. “I need to call my mom,” I think. And then, in an instant, I remember reality. I put the phone down on my nightstand. In 2022, My mother was […]
When Life Crushes Your Heart
While walking along the Atlantic Ocean, I spot an auburn-haired beauty bending, kneeling, spreading her hand on the sand. Is she simply imprinting her palm? Or is she holding the hand of God? Maybe she’s doing both. Because the God who can bind the chains of the Pleiades and loosen Orion’s belt (Job 38:31) knows […]
Redemption of Mother’s Day: How to Heal Your Hurts
About two hours after Mother’s Day ended, my mother died in her bed of a massive heart attack. She was 65. Mom called her doctor, only hours after I talked with her the morning of that special day. He told her to get to the hospital ASAP after hearing her symptoms—profuse sweating, vomiting, shoulder pain. […]
Coming Home
There’s so much I don’t know. So many questions. My head can swirl dizzy and drain right away lost until there’s nothing left. There’s peace in the letting go and asking myself again and again, “Who am I to know the mind of God?” Of course, I know the answer. My index finger runs gently […]
Why Falling Flat is A Holy Experience
We call him Mr. Lime because he’s the brightest of all on the slopes, dressed in brilliant green to match his Burton board. He reminds me often that he’s not one of us. “I’m a BOARDER, Mom! Not a SKIER!” “Yes dear, you’re not like the other four of us. I forgot. Once again.” He […]
How To Be “Best-Dressed” This Christmas
Fifty-four years ago, a little girl with reddish curls sat beside the Christmas tree. She wore a blue corduroy robe with white piping her grandmother had made. A poodle with hair curly as hers smiled for the camera. Then, ripping the wrapping off a certain package, her blue eyes grew wide. Inside, she found her […]
What We All Need to Know About Respect and Servanthood
We rolled slowly along the street, meandering our way to what would soon be two new graves dug in Arlington National Cemetery—two of 400,000 already grassed green. Our vehicle stopped. Six men in crisp Army uniform stood in front of us, facing the awning where we would memorialize and pray for our friend’s father, Sgt. […]
On the Edge: How Now Shall We Live?
Here is the world. You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time, you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you. Frederick Buechner Our float plane’s […]
Why We Really Need Jesus To Clean Us
The older I get, the more I recognize my depravity, the deep-down dirty of my thoughts, words and deeds, of my even deeper motivations and instincts. And the older I get, the more I know my need of Jesus. Kind of like Paul in Romans . . . I do not understand what I do. […]
Fear Not—An Invitation to the Freedom of Dependence
The men in my life are laying out clothes, filling up containers, packing enough for five days of their ten away in two cities where terror has struck again—London and Paris. And they’ll be standing on the beaches where some other mother’s boys landed and turned the waters red at the same ages as our […]
Encouragement for the Broken and Stigmatized
I stepped out of the shadows and declared—on Facebook—during Holy Week—that I was suffering with clinical depression. I had hit the hard floor of desperation on Wednesday before Maundy Thursday in the midst of a medication change, one of several I’d been through over the past twenty years. So why did I dare post and […]
Dust to Dust And The Peace that Comes with Letting Go
They carried her to the altar, their mother. They carried her, all ash in a small wooden box. They covered her with a white cloth, embroidered with a cross. A cross. Where Christ paid for our ultimate reconciliation—restored relation between holy God and sinner. Between sinners and sinners . . . All watched […]