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 move from my home state to his, my new step-father decided the seven-year old me needed an introduction. He loaded up the station wagon and took our family to his favorite… Read More

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 … leaning. For a minute, I can’t figure out why. But then I catch the faint sound of her voice imitating mine. She’s leaning in to hear my harmony.

I don’t say… Read More

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 struck,
and whipped,
and accused,
and mocked Him;

if He had not lifted and carried the rough, heavy instrument of His death,

and laid His hands against the cross beam,

and accepted nails into His flesh;

if He had not… Read More

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 peep of two-legged babies.

That’s what’s filling my ears right now … the sound of chicks trying out their teeny vocal chords. Yesterday was “chick day” at the… Read More

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 slip of paper, the six-year old girl in me elbowed her way to the forefront. I felt a little bit Christmas morning and a little bit August 5th, all blended up. I felt… Read More

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 a cup of coffee–same as every other morning–but this cup is sipped leisurely. Sighs of satisfaction usually occur at some point. I wait as long as I can. Eventually, when I can’t stand the suspense any longer, I’ll ask, “What should… Read More

I am living in a snowglobe. Every handful of minutes, the wind visits the alders and maples and evergreens surrounding our house and sends a shower of white billowing about. Inside this globe, I sit in front of the woodstove and watch the orange glow on the other side of the tempered glass. The sounds of David Lanz’s Christmas CD fills the house. To my left, our 15-foot Christmas tree towers. If I had my druthers, the massive fir would be draped head to toe in white lights; for the… Read More

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 gathered in a huddle around my mortar and pestle, and the careful measurements of half-, and quarter-, and eighths of a teaspoonful of rosemary, sage, thyme, oregano, pepper, and nutmeg. She didn’t get to see the turn… Read More

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 Mom and/or Dad, Nathan would share Taylorbutler stories. And that’s how he said her name–all smashed together like it was one unseparatable word: “Taylorbutler.” Chris (my husband’s assistant pastor) and Cora learned all kinds of things… Read More

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?”

So she sits there, oblivious to my own flying fingers in my office fifteen feet away. She’s oblivious to the sounds of the Seahawks game drifting from the living room below. She’s unaware that… Read More