One tiny fist stretches high above my newborn grandson’s head. Like a miniature superman ready for take off he poses against the soft blue blanket where he lies. He uncurls his legs, elongating, stiffening, pushing. A yawn as big as a canyon, sweet as a kiss contorts his velvet cheeks. And for his parents, the […]
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Flour whitens the front of my shirt like snow. I brush at it fruitlessly with a hand sticky with wrinkled bits of dough like hanging chads. My counter space, with its strict no fly-zone is littered with ingredients and pans. I brush my arm against my forehead and look at the mess. Am I in […]
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God is always on time, yet I often wonder why He waits so long. I tilt the scissor’s blade against the length of bright red ribbon. Curls slither through my fingers in tiny ringlets where they bunch against a shiny Christmas box making a colorful bow. Time, like strands of ribbon, moved through generations waiting […]
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Proclamation 118—Thanksgiving Day, 1864 October 20, 1864 Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November next as a day which I desire to be observed by all my fellow-citizens, wherever they may then be, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to […]
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[republished from November 2014, also published at Metro Voice News KC p.12] Thanksgiving tangled with unanswered prayers. I slumped against the antiseptic tiled hallway. My stalwart, “Hang on and hold it in,” gave way to unrestrained tears like prisoners let free. Crystal rivulets dropped to the floor at my feet. Each time I exited my daughter’s hospital […]
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“Teach me,” my words stumbled out. “Teach me how to lose my daughter.” Surely this godly woman who’d lived through the horrific murder of her son could tell me how to keep from drowning in the waters of grief that suffocated me. Her eyes widened, startled, and she drew a sharp intake of breath. “I […]
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Ps 78:5-7 “…That they should make them known to their children; That the generation to come might know them, The children who would be born, That they may arise and declare them to their children, That they may set their hope in God….” (NKJV) I was there when you were born eleven years ago. Your […]
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And it came to pass in those days, the wife was harried, and the husband bombarded. Time was ticking like a clock, calendar pages flipped like a fan and a list of one million and two things-to-do grew. Deadlines loomed. Expectations overwhelmed. Sharks were in the water. I plopped down my money, paid for the […]
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The crowd raises to its feet around the auditorium, a representation of a myriad of countries. Former missionaries who served in Brazil, Mali and Russia stand to sing. An elderly man, his hair so white it looks like snow sits stooped in a wheel-chair. His wife is gone now. I wonder if it still hurts […]
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Sometimes the dots line up, and we connect one to the other and the picture is clear. We see what God was trying to do and we say, “Oh, I get it. That’s why that had to happen that way.” That’s why the tire was flat. That’s why I got sick. That’s why I lost […]
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