My dad, talented in all things musical, had a sharp ear and an equally sharp tongue. His pitch was perfect. He judged without apology.  “Should have been a B-flat not a B-natural,” he burst in shouting.  He could be working the back 40 but when I struck a wrong note on the piano, he appeared […]

“I want to hold you,” he begged at his mommy’s knee, arms upraised toward her, little toes tipped his almost two-year-old body up and down expectantly. “I want to hold you too,” she said. She bent in half, her long brown hair veiled a smile I knew she wore. My daughter-in-law placed hands on both […]

Before farms had fashionable “mud rooms,” they existed. “Don’t you come in the front porch,” my mom insisted to my black-dirt-clothed brothers before supper. Because of course on the farm we had suppers not dinners, and dinners instead of lunches. My three brothers heavy with the weight of a mixture of wheat dust, sweat and […]

So, I cut his roast chicken. Into little square edibles. When I looked up, he wore a puzzled expression, a little worried but seriously amused. I drew my eyes back down to where mangled bits of poultry lay in a pile on my husband’s plate. “Hmmm,” he commented. “Maybe you need a day off.” It’s […]

“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28-30 NKJV) Typically on the farm, Labor Day meant a day to labor, another of many laboring days. Sometimes a picnic was thrown in. Rest had to do with drop-into-bed-at-the-end-of-the-day heat exhaustion mixed with the kind of […]

They come, a little bewildered, some heralding children yapping at their ankles and running in circles, some almost newlyweds with blank-slate futures while others brave it alone. Obedient to God’s tap on the shoulder, sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s grip of the heart and passionate about the message of Christ’s gospel, they are willing to […]

My parents weren’t really the “let the consequences teach her” kind of people. They were more the “let’s give her some consequences” types. But since I could always count on what my actions would get me, I had the ability to weigh whether or not what I had in mind was worth the pain. Those […]

“First,” my husband said listening to my remodeling ideas, “I need to see if it’s a load bearing wall.”  My face fell like a house made of cards. In the back of my mind, from the day we purchased this house, I had envisioned our bedroom with a wall removed to double its size and […]