Love Like Ocean Waves

It’s the ocean again. This time in a dream. I found out two friends would be traveling there, and I silently imagined myself asking them if they would mind if I tagged along. Without the fare of gas, with a place to stay, without a family to care for. There would be nearly no expense….

my heart trembles and sings

my own dear child eyes of bluest bright, alight body in holy motionbrimming over with lifesongand the beating, beating, beating heart beautiful breath that flows inside you like a melody for the gift of your love and living presence my heart trembles and sings (This is the image I saw outside my office window as…

I Go Back to the Ocean of My Childhood

When you were a childdid you lose yourself at the seashoreand forget life aches? Did you run to the waters laughing? I go backto the ocean of my childhoodwhere I was a girlphotographed by my mother,my father looking out to sea I want the waves to whisper somethingbut they are stillsuspended in memorythey do not…

The Memory and Promise of Light

There are moments, in the middle of the night, when the electricity of current events sends a shockwave through my sleeping body and wakes me, wide-eyed and shaken. What is going to happen to this broken world? I see myself, gathering my children around me like the mother in a fairy tale, walking into a…

Setting Up Stones of Remembrance (Podcast #24)

I have been reflecting on God’s goodness to me and my family more than usual this week, reminded of the miracles he has done in our lives in bringing us safely through so many questions, fears, doubts, and prayers over these years of marriage and parenting. In this podcast, I am sharing about setting up…

Grief and the Path of Beauty

Let me start by saying I do not pretend to be an expert on grief, and I truly hope I never am an expert on grief. My life has been colored by it just enough for me to know that this is something that’s going to stay with me forever. And that it is worth…

Grief is a River

Grief is a river that now runs through my life.  Sometimes it is slow and steady, passing gently over rocks of remembrance, pooling up in beautiful, idyllic scenes where the late afternoon sun brushes through the trees and paints the waters and the riverbank in bright splashes of quivering light.  The aching beauty of having…

The Word That’s Worth A Thousand Pictures

I will start out this post by saying I have yet to figure this out.  It is a problem that I have wrestled with for years, especially the years since I have become a mother.  It is a problem that seems to grow with each child we add to this family.  And even though it…

Longing

Longing.  This word won’t leave me alone.  It first jumped out of the pages of Mere Christianity (by C.S. Lewis) a few weeks ago, and since then, it has worked itself into every book, every movie, and every mini-drama of my life.  The word itself can give me the feeling.  (((Do you know what I mean?)))…

The Daily Turn #13: Daddy’s Garden

Walking again today through my Daddy’s garden I become a child. The scent of honey-sweet allysum is carried by the first wind of the end of summer. I can not find a poetic way to say that the towering hastas smell like honeysuckle and gardenias combined, but I don’t mind, because I do not yet read…

The Daily Turn #10: Glow

When I look back years from now on this particular summer I will remember the taste of lavender the laughter of children the sweat on my husband’s brow not furrowed, but soft rainbows over sunflowering eyes– A warm yellow memory, like spilled-out sun– the same brightness I have felt right in the core welling up…