As I write tonight, I am sitting beneath a Strawberry Moon. Blindingly bright, it rises over the low pasture, and up onto the ridge, her beams picking their way through the blueberry rows, bush by bush. I settle into a creaking Adirondack chair – a gift given with memories to keep and memories to create […]
To Be A Mother of Daughters
Braiding her hair in the dark felt like taking up a mantle, here I am, playing the mother. Almost a decade of being a mama to daughters, and in my heart I am sometimes still the girl. I fished out nightgowns for dolls, tucking the freshly clad babies up against a three year old’s shoulders, […]
And She Treasured These Things In Her Heart
Okay, so yesterday I woke up early, groggily whipped out a “Wednesday in the Word” post (which is a terrible name, by the way, but shows just how uncreative I am when it comes to the pressure of titles) while fielding the complaints of two fever-ridden kids and watching Daniel Tiger. That was oh, 6:30 […]
Love Is a Respecter of Persons: Spiritual Boundaries, Part 6
Sacred Smallness, Real Life is Now Love lets us be persons. We are made in God’s image, with minds brilliant and hearts containing eternity. Christ patterned us after himself. And while the laws of Life require consequence for turning away from God – consequences we experience both now and eternally – the laws of Life also require free […]
Treating Others With Respect and Trust: Spiritual Boundaries, Part 5
…love always trusts, always hopes… The first evidence of God acting with self-constraint in relationship to us is in the second chapter of Genesis. The story of the Fall teaches us – among many lessons – that God treats us with respect, and does not force or coerce us to come into relationship with him. “All of […]
The Commonness Seems More The Miracle
Sacred Smallness, Real Life is Now There are almost 100 unpublished posts in my draft folder, and a erroneous click of an arrow brought this to the top of the tier today. It’s at least 2 years old, but it made me smile. The only thing I’d add to the romantic musing is that while the […]
This Is What Remains (real life is now)
The past several days have been difficult – not in their entirety, but overall. When I started this series, I had a sense of some things that might come our way mid-month and they did. Other unexpected things piggy backed on those, and so for five days we seemed to weather one crisis or challenge […]
The Self-Restraint of God: Spiritual Boundaries Part 4
At the end of the last post I wrote: It makes me feel deeply safe to know that God does not force his love upon me, to know he does not force himself upon me. This is the deepest of all our theologies, to me, this one that says, quite simply, God is love. Love […]
Love Is A Respecter of Persons: Spiritual Boundaries, part 3
(post #13 for the Write 31 Day Challenge) see all posts here Two mornings ago, on the last morning of our retreat, my sister and mama and I were watching the waves. “The ocean waves always make me think of Jesus’ unrelenting love for us,” my mom said. “No matter what, his love just keeps coming, pursuing us, […]
Spiritual Boundaries, Part 2: Real Life is Now
(post #12) writing for a month within the sacred smallness of this very real life: see all posts here Note: this is the second part to a short series-within-a-series on spiritual boundaries. Read introductory story here. I love my charismatic upbringing. The confidence afforded me in my relationship with Christ, the foundational assurance that I am loved, and wanted, and […]