When You Feel Like The Edges Of Your Life Are Crumbling And You Need Solid Anchors
I stood on the edge of a cliff wondering whether the rock would hold me if I ventured too far to the edge. From my high vantage point, I could see the vast array of autumn colors and the large lake down below—Devil’s Lake. I saw men and women with ropes anchored in rock, thrown […]
Some Thoughts on Dying When You Feel Like It and the Hope That Stops You
It is late September. The sugar maple is tinged with fire, a burning mix of orange and red and yellow, engulfing the green. Honking Vs of geese fly over the barn. One yellowed leaf curls on the grass. Three Sandhill cranes lift off alfalfa field, warbling their way into the air, a trinity created by […]
A Place For All God’s Creatures in His Special Upside-Down Economy
Our traditional Sabbath day family connection is a hike somewhere—anywhere on a trail through nature. It’s our ritual. Our comfort. The holy tie that binds. This past Sunday was one of those near-fall afternoons where temperatures slipped. Long sleeves and sweatshirts replaced the T-shirts of summer for the first time since June. Breezes blew stiff. […]
When the World is Falling Apart and You Need Your Own Care Package
Sometimes I read the headlines and am tempted to despair. Sometimes I’m tempted to feel guilty for my own problems when I see those suffering from darkness all over the world, feeling real terrors of their own. Then again, I know Jesus cares for all—for all the masses and for just one. He suffered and […]
Fare at the Fair
This morning, I’m pondering something deep, as usual. I’m thinking about the deep-fried food I saw last night at the Pima County Fair, about 60 miles north of the Arizona/Mexico border. I should be mourning like the dove cooing melancholy on the wall outside our condo. Instead, I’m cackling loudly like the thrasher out there also, waiting for his morning […]
Good Friday—Our Hope
Reflecting on what Jesus did on this day brings me to a still, quiet place of awe and gratefulness. I can’t fathom His suffering, His love, His utter determination to not leave us as broken orphans in a broken world. He chose to heal us with his life—and death. His choice cost him everything. We […]
How to Have a Joyous Heart
I’ve been writing about contrasts. We often think of contrasts as opposites so far away from each other that they never touch. Instead, contrasts are often so close that the balance of our lives depends on them holding hands, becoming pivotal points of growth. One without the other is just plain impossible. Saint Catherine of […]
Can Hope be Born Again?
Our home is filled with Christmas lights. And nightlights. We don’t have little kids anymore and I’m not afraid of the dark. So why all the nightlights? Well, because I’ve stubbed and broken my toes too many times stumbling around in the dark trying to find my way . . . to the bathroom. That’s […]
Death and Birth the Whole Spectrum of Feelings
My first glance at Facebook today left me near breathless. One of my very good friends posted a picture of a baby—in black & white. It wasn’t any particular baby known to her. It was taken off the Internet—off some random site. But the status was very, very personal. The baby—the one conceived shortly after […]
A Spotted Woman
She stood there in the circle of three women and said this . . . “There’s nothing in this life like having a baby and having your baby have a baby.” She said it to the woman standing beside me, about my age, readying herself for her first grandchild due to arrive the natural way […]
Always, Joy
He said it to me flat out, like he couldn’t wrap his head around the mystery of me . . . “I’m shocked that you sound so . . . JOYFUL. You’ve been through so much in your life that would have buried so many others. And yet, you just exude this joy.” We had […]
All Ands and No Buts
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: A time to be born and a time to die, A time to plant and a time to uproot, A time to kill and a time to heal, A time to tear down and a time to build, A time to […]