Did I offer peace today? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I love? These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come. ~Henri Nouwen…
The past year has been a difficult one, full of challenges much like the decade before it. I sometimes feel like a battered ship struggling to stay afloat in an unrelenting storm. And last fall, the seemingly endless stress of balancing marriage, motherhood, and caregiving—while trying to “keep it all together” and hide my depression…
You’re sipping your morning coffee reverently when the phone rings. It’s your mother-in-law calling to say she’s coming for a weeklong visit–tomorrow. You continue to hold the phone to your ear, but her words stop registering as you look around your house. The dust has built up on the baseboards. Papers lie in stacks on…
Teaching five-year-olds at church one morning necessitated bravery my daughter never expected to need in a church basement. “Mom, I had to kill a spider today! Myself! Those little kids were watching me, and I knew I had to do it so they wouldn’t be scared. But–I. Killed. A. Spider!” If you knew my third…
When I was learning to cook, I discovered a few things the hard way. Vanilla extract does not taste good by itself, baking chocolate is not the same as a candy bar, and forgetting to include key ingredients will result in something that might look like the picture in the cookbook, but won’t taste like…
Several years ago our family traveled from Georgia to Colorado for a skiing vacation. We had a black Labrador named Tessa at the time. As anyone with pets knows, vacations present the conundrum of what to do with them while you’re away. Fortunately, friends offered to take Tessa for the week. They had lost their…