I plunked her diaper-padded bottom into the shopping cart and directed two little legs into the slots. The mission began. I had one hour, one child with me, two others at home, and a whole lot of errands to accomplish. I shoved some apples into a bag and twisted a green wire around the top […]
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Spring Cleaning My hands immersed in suds, I stand at the kitchen sink and gaze at the aura of green tinging the trees against blue sky outside my window. Buds are beginning to open. A hint of spring awakens. Bloom is coming to the brown earth. As I savor the beauty, I become aware that […]
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My husband and I get a kick out of mistranslations, written instructions or explanations into English from another language. Perhaps it’s because we have been on the other side. Language learning can be brutal, and we have both had plenty of embarrassing moments when what we thought we said did not match what we really […]
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“For our citizenship is in heaven…” I hold the blue covered booklet in my palm. Lines of weary travelers are long. They hold passports in green, maroon, and brown, irreplaceable identities of citizens from around the globe. I look for clues to invent their stories. A mom cradles an infant who has cried nine hours […]
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“You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them.” (Psalm 89:9, ESV) There are storms and then there are STORMS. On the scale of 1-10, ten being hurricane level, I remember it as about a 4, maybe a 5. I’m not actually talking about the thunderclouds in the sky type […]
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In the In-Between I sat on the cold window ledge and leaned my forehead against the glass, looking out at the hospital garden. Brown earth, dried and brittle, had replaced the green of months before. I looked up at a bleak sky. Bare-branched trees broke solemn clouds. I dislike in-between spots, those adolescent-awkward, neither-here-nor-there, twilight […]
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“So Ahab sent for all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together on Mount Carmel.” (I Kings 18:20; NKJV). Let me paint the scene. A range of mountains, called the Carmel range, stretched some thirty miles from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea into the Jezreel Valley. Lush and green with trees over […]
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For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. I woke up this morning and felt like I’d lasted longer than my shelf life. I’m tired, weary and it is the just the first month of a new year. Maybe David felt that way when he wrote Psalm 103. As for man, his […]
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We met in the living room. Two couples. Older and younger. Married and about-to-be. My husband and I, the older and married pair, sat on stuffed tweed chairs across the coffee table from them. Side by side, facing us on our brown leather couch, hands intertwined, their love spoke like electricity through long glances and […]
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“…if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV). Backgrounds. Everyone has them. They are the backdrop of our todays, the backstory of our narrative. Some people seem to get all the breaks, and others all the rough stuff. But […]
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