As a little girl who had lived all my short life in Washington state, I had no knowledge of how things were in the south. I didn’t realize, for example, that fishing is not an optional activity for Oklahomans. Apparently, even new, gangly-legged transplants are expected to pole-up and do their part.  So shortly after our [...]

She sits close to me tonight. Closer than usual. Sometimes, on some Wednesday nights, I can tell her mind is elsewhere. Those times, she’s not enclosed within the four walls of this church. She’s running free. But tonight she leans in close. It’s not that she’s snuggling–which she also does sometimes–it’s more that she’s just [...]

If Jesus had not left the beauty of heaven, where He was adored and worshiped as God, and entered humanity through a dark, cold cave of obscurity, if He had not endured betrayal by the ones He loved most, and stood silently while mere humans plucked out His beard and spat on His face, and [...]

  Oh, how I love spring. How can you not? I don’t care where you live, spring looks like the earth yawning and stretching its arms. It smells like hope, and new beginnings, and the promise of soon-to-be-cut grass. It tastes like a long-awaited picnic. It feels like bright yellow fluff. It sounds like the [...]

  I love that my husband doesn’t argue with me when I ask for things. This morning, while I was sipping coffee and correcting Tera’s math, he slipped me a folded sheet of paper. “Happy Valentine’s Day.” In the span of time that it took for me to reach for and take and open that [...]

On Mondays, we turn into an old married couple. Although no pastor I know ever actually takes an entire day off, Dave tries to stay away from his office on Mondays, and he likes to pretend (though I know differently) that he’s not thinking about church and the people it contains. We begin the day with [...]

She was sleeping when I began slicing onions and celery and a Granny Smith apple; when I crumbled one tube of maple-flavored sausage into my heavy black skillet, and stirred, and watched the heat rising in savory wisps. She didn’t see the coming together of a fresh batch of homemade poultry seasoning–all those spice containers [...]

My friend Nathan is a character. During his first real “out in the world” experience (otherwise known as kindergarten), he became enamored of one little girl, a girl we’ll call Taylor Butler, because that’s her name. Every afternoon, when he made the pilgrimage back home and sat down to a snack and a debriefing with [...]

My daughter sits at her computer, headphones in place, hands flying over the keyboard as she types in a homeschooling schedule for herself. Tera is most happy when she’s in “secretary mode.” I couldn’t say no when she asked, awhile ago, “Mom, can I please make up my own work schedule for school this year?” [...]