God Never Needs Updating

“It needs an update,” my husband says.   He wasn’t talking about me, which is a good thing. For us both.   Phones, computers, thermostats, security systems, clocks, TV’s, GPS systems. I mean really? Have you noticed how many things need updating?  “They aren’t talking,” he sighs, with a kind of long extended tire-flattening sound.  […]

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Numbers, Math, and Green Beans

“Eat the green beans first,” I told my homeschooled grandson. He grinned. He understood immediately what I meant. It really had nothing to do with vegetables, but everything to do with the math.  Like cold green beans next to delicious hot fried chicken, math remained on my grandson’s plate for as long as he could […]

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The Best Kind Of Love

His little fingers dripped with orange greasy pizza oil and stuck together with chocolate fudge-vanilla. I checked his face and found it wreathed with those same streaks of orange and black.  Quickly I stretched across the table, searching for a napkin to wipe his mess before it migrated to my jacket. But before I found […]

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Was It All A Waste?

It broke my heart and stole my resolve.  As a writer, rejects come. It’s kind of part of the whole deal, it happens and though difficult, it usually helps me grow. But this email rejection bit like dog’s teeth into the fabric of my being. It wouldn’t let me go.  I’d labored hours upon hours, […]

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We’ve Got Each Other

“Was it Ross?” “No that’s not right,” he shook his head. “Richard?” “Maybe we ought to take some of that stuff they advertise on T.V.,” my husband mused when both of us together couldn’t come up with the name which was “on the tip of our tongues.” “What stuff?” I asked. “Oh, you know those […]

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Who Holds Your Heart?

One of our teenaged granddaughters spent a few days with us recently. She came loaded with gift cards she’d received from Christmas. We spent a day  shopping and she had a day of bliss. But even with a store full of a teen’s heart’s desires, the math had to be figured. How much of the […]

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How Balanced Are You?

Balance. It’s a thing.  She toddles toward me, hands outstretched. My eyes are wide, excited and inviting, “Come on,” I urge with a half whisper. A foot lifts, and then another. A wobbly sort of drunken-sailor-tilt, propels her miniature body. A little too far to one side and then the other, she comes closer. And […]

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Grandma and Grandson measuring height.

How Mature Are You?

“Who do you want to be when you grow up?” I used to ask our kids. I liked to hear all the ideas. Their aspirations swung wildly. Everything had its season, from astronaut on Mars, to archeologist digging up dinosaurs.   Who do you want to be when you grow up? Oh, so you think […]

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Can God’s Children Trust God’s Gifts?

How is it that a man who hates shopping finds some unexplainable driving challenge in riffling through one bottomless brown bin after another?  I watch the man I thought I knew so well, bent over a mountain of boxes. My husband flips and tosses them as if his life depends on it. The unadorned piles […]

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What does satisfaction look like to you?

“That was so satisfying,” my grandson said. Surprised, I wondered, “Where did that came from?”   He had just fished out a slippery shard of thin ice from a puddle. It lay  shattered like glass where he’d thrown it. Red-cheeked and half-frozen, he beamed with pleasure.  The statement sounded funny from the lips of a […]

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