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 […]
Mothering Mother, Part 1
For the next few posts, I will be raising the shades of a window. The view, at first, might look bleak. I pray you’ll follow to the end, because it’s happy and I believe, like me, you will find great blessing in the whole picture. “If there’s anything here you want, you’d better take it […]
Broken for Good
How can a good God allow bad things to happen to good people? I’ve heard this question posed by numerous people over the years. I’ve asked God the same question. Who’s “good”? What’s “bad”? Summing up nearly 54 years of much “good” and a whole lot of “bad” in my own life, here’s what I […]
Merit Badges
Husband and son are at Boy Scout camp for the week, getting dirty, having fun, and working on merit badges. Boy Scouts is big on goal-setting and achievement. Scouts measure achievement and advance rank by earning merit badges. Each merit badge has a list of specifications for achievement requiring learning and performing some particular skill […]
Turtles and Grapes
Rome wasn’t built in a day, the saying goes. Big accomplishments always start small. But sometimes it’s hard to accept my smallness when I’ve got my eyes on others’ bigness. And it’s easy to stop taking steps forward when we don’t know exactly where we’re going. Growth hurts. Is it worth the pain? I’m struggling […]
Shipwrecks
Some write what others want to hear. Some write to help others feel good. And some write words so offensive to popular culture that they are either ignored or persecuted. Times haven’t changed because people haven’t changed. The prophets of old won no popularity contests. They probably didn’t love their job assignments because what they […]
Mountains and Pumpkins
“How did you get to be so wise?” he asked. The question startled me. Wise? I don’t think of myself as wise. If anything, I’m so aware of my flaws and inner ignorance about what really matters that I often wonder what I really have to offer anyone that’s worthwhile. Through the course of life, […]
Get Peace
“Do not worry . . .” Jesus says it, those three little words, ten letters in the English language. And He says it often. Sounds so commanding. Why would Jesus command us not to worry? Because we DO worry and because worry steals and kills—two things Jesus does not want for those He loves. Worry […]
Anchors and Chains
When pain is to be borne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all. C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain “Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore,” Dorothy says it as she wakes up from […]