We were so young.  We didn’t feel young, but I wasn’t quite 22.  We were launching on that big adventure called marriage, forty-eight years ago today.  Our wedding was a small affair in my mother’s home: only David’s immediate family and my extended family of cousins, aunts and uncles and grandmothe...

Every year on this day I remember my Grandma Mary.  Today would be her 128^th birthday.  Some years her birthday falls on Mother’s Day. Not so this year, but the date is still indelibly written on my heart. 

Grandma Mary had one child, my mom.  When my grandfather passed away in his sixties, Grandma...

Motherhood isn’t always the lovely and rewarding experience described by flowery greeting cards.  I know personally the challenges and even deep sadness that a mother goes through.  I suffered through one child’s learning disabilities and another’s life threatening autoimmune disease.  In addition, ...

Sing, aged turtle, as you rise
  from the depths of the ocean’s brine;
sing of the world’s primal onset,
  of time and times and half a time.

Sing, tiny seeds dropped in the soil
  amidst the charred remains of trees;
sing of rebirth, of green and spring
  carried along by bees and breeze.

 Sing, giant ...

haiku for Lori

         Unhinged by wind
like hair falling out in clumps
     advancing new growth

Liz McFadzean

The wonderful thing about our God is that he always had a “work-around” for sin.  His work-around is one perfect atoning sacrifice for my sin and the sin of the world.  

I’m pretty careful these days with the word sin in any instance except in the case of my own.   I’ve noticed that we humans are v...

At the beginning of Lent, I distinguished harmony from unison singing.  When I longed for harmony, I wasn’t longing for total agreement, but for a melody of multiple voices in tune with one another.  So here, near the end of Lent, I go back to a similar refrain—I am longing for peace. 

Peace isn’t ...

Jesus is the one who has broken down the walls of hostility between humans.  I must be oh, so careful not to build them back, through unkind thoughts or broken systems.  So, this week I long for HUMILITY and EMPATHY. 

I’ve put these two words together because both require me to listen more and not ...

I used to believe that if I kept to my workout regimen, I wouldn’t ever lose my muscle tone.  I could keep my body and fitness forever.  I didn’t take into account the debilitating effects of plantar fasciitis.  An overuse injury, common to tennis players of a caliber much higher than mine, it has t...

“Open the eyes of my heart, Lord.  Open the eyes of my heart.
I want to see You; I want to see You.”          Michael W. Smith 

Today I am longing for VISION…. vision to see God and learn from him.  To know that what exists is so much more than what I see before me.  And yet to revel in seeing as if...