A Letter for My Father (and maybe you?)
Dear Dad, We have history, you and me. Like the time you made that multi-colored Styrofoam tower with me and it reached clear up to the ceiling. Even you needed a chair to place that last block, though in my mind you could touch the clouds without one. That’s what five year-old girls think of […]
On Our Knees—Together
What you are about to read is true. Names are changed. Broken has no bounds. Broken affects us in a small farming community. Broken affects us all. But so does God’s grace—even more. God wants to love us in our broken. Will we let Him? Will we be part of the healing process? Or will we […]
A Stunning Love
“I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and […]
Banged Up
It’s spring. Birds and kids are flying. And some of each got banged up recently. Nick ran around in the dark playing Capture the Flag with his Boy Scout troop. Suddenly, his body hurled forward while his foot stayed behind, bound by a protruding tree root. A trip to the ER and an x-ray showed […]
Broken and Burned
We go on the hunt today. Through field still cold and unturned, we hold our destination in sight, a ramshackle barn and a crumpled man’s home. The ruins. The broken. The history. The textures of a life long-lived. That’s what we’re after. We don’t want prettified. We want real and we want to see the deep […]
You Reap More Than You Sow
Welcome to the Saturday gallery of glory! Today’s post is a tribute to a dear soul in my life. How can I label her? It’s difficult to find just the right words. I met her when she was 15, I think, while shopping at a local grocery store. Those who know my effusive personality know that […]
Faith in the Ice Storms of Life
The rain came pouring down. At 2 AM, I wake to God’s fingers sifting crystal beads onto roofs of house and barn. Horses are shedding winter coats. I wonder where they stand during this dark, icy night. Are they out vulnerable in the paddock, frozen rain pelting their bodies? Or have they sought shelter in […]
Free From Shame
So he stands there across the island from me, all grown up, wanting so much to be a man, to be seen as a man. I ask him. I ask him, though I vowed to myself I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t get into his business because he doesn’t want us in his business. But it’s so […]
Harvesting Goodness
There were no cell towers—only a satellite phone on the arch of an island known as Harvester in Shelikof Strait, a thirty minute skiff ride from Kodiak’s Larsen Bay where our bush plane landed. The Fields family are the only human inhabitants on this bit of Alaskan wilderness. They spend every summer setting salmon nets, […]
When Life Hits Hard and You Wonder How to Hold On
A blur hangs over our farm. I think the sky is crying. Teardrops hang from pastures wired. Webbed strands dangle from spruce looking fragile. I know better. Appearances often deceive . . . What looks most fragile is most strong. Yet, I wonder. I think of myself—my whole life—especially these past twelve months. How […]
The Joy of Serving
There is freedom in self-forgetfulness. Sometimes life pounds us hard, straight down into the ground and we feel like we’re stuck forever in the hard. Even in such times and in such places, there can be moments of relief when we allow God to move through us, right where we are. Our family is in […]
Unplugged
He and she and I went for a morning walk—a Sabbath on a Thursday. I need sabbatical on a daily basis—taking time to unplug, slow, open all my senses and soul to God’s magnificence displayed in His creation. I do believe we all need a daily dose of sabbath. We began on the northern trail […]