Open Hearts Find Room For Jesus
The slammed door echoed into the hallway and shocked the kitchen. Probably every teenager has managed a few. Ours did. And, although door slams were outlawed, the ugly secret was that I w...
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2024
49 articles published this year.
Of His Kingdom There Will Be No End
How many times have you said, “there’s just no end to this?” Paperwork, bills, middle of the night feedings, late at night work shifts, or maybe it’s simply the dirty pile of dishes in th...
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A Baby Brings Hope And A Future
Mornings have always been a process for me, like pulling me out of a deep well where my feet are sucked by muddy weights of dreams. Greeting each new day takes time and a dose of courage...
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God is Good Regardless
“Oh Mom. God would be good if there was cancer,” she replied, sitting against the metal slatted headboard of the hospital bed. Her voice held that daughter to mother tone of reproof, and...
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What Is Your Heart Carrying Into the Holiday Season?
I love the Holidays. Always have. Hopefully always will. Yet, as seasons pass, new challenges arise and I find at times a sense of melancholy seeps into this time of year. I recognize how...
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God’s Beauty On The Journey
It’s a crisp November day outside. Up until now the warmth of late summer has hung its hat on Virginia’s autumn. But, fall chill descended last night and the breezy gusts feel polar in co...
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What Pillars Do We Stand On Today?
It’s Wednesday morning. I am writing this blog five days before November 5. Election Day, 2024. Likely, a winner will have been decided when it pops up in your email or feed. Your world w...
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Do Autumn Leaves remind you of Life in Christ?
It’s autumn. I’ve gotta admit that I am not a fan of fall. I see the beauty in the Virginia reds, yellows, and oranges. I love the floating leaves in the air. I like the sound of their cr...
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If God Is With Us?
Does it seem at times like the whole world is a powder keg about to blow everything to bits and pieces? Yet, it’s the personal kind of powder kegs, when life feels out of control, that sh...
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The Grieving We Do
I remember the clingers. I can feel those little arms that hugged tight around my neck and the legs circling my body. I remember the process, of disentangling a hand, then a leg, then the...
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Be Imitators of Me
Three of my grandsons love baseball. And that is an understatement. Growing up they lived it. They chewed wads of gum, memorized plays, and spit. Yes, those little guys could spit with th...
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Do You Feel Like a Nobody?
I heard the door open and my husband’s heavy footsteps slowly ascend the steps. “Hi Honey,” I greeted at the top. “How’d it go?” We were young with a newborn in a new city, new apartment,...
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Jesus Meets Us Where We Are
It was back in the day of big over the lap Rand McNally Maps. One lay across my legs while I sat shotgun on the front bench seat of our 1966 Chevy Impala. Across the two big pages, lines...
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The Reward of Achievement
If you were to walk the streets of Bologna, Italy during a spattering of months out of the year, you might see a confusing sight. Now and again whether in a crowd or walking alone, amid A...
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How Edgy Are You?
My dad used to have some succinct sayings to get his points across, as in, “ain’t got the brains God gave a goose.” This pronouncement, often hurled at politicians, portrayed a questionab...
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Are You Running Well?
I have some dear friends, whom I love very much even though they run. I mean really run. On purpose. Because they like it. They have a few years up on me, yet they are forever completing...
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We Laugh and We Cry
The words stop me when I come across them, … “the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people…” They make me pause and close my eyes...
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And School Begins Again
His big round eyes followed me. His little face filled with confusion, fear, and betrayal. I read his silent plea as if the words had been spoken, “Don’t leave me.” As I turned from the c...
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Ode to the Nine Foot Tomato Plant
Oh tomato plant that towers many feet above my head. Where is your fruit? I grew up on a farm in Kansas, and at the risk of embarrassing all my Kansas friends and relatives who put into c...
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In The Father’s Arms
My eyes had been glued for a while to the little boy in the row ahead of me. He must have been about a year old. Fussy on his mother’s lap, I could see the parental exchange. “Should I ta...
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Are You Thick Skinned but Thin Hearted?
“Gotta be thick-skinned to survive ministry,” advised a pastor to my young husband. “I’d never have continued if I’d let every criticism get under my skin.” As a pastor’s wife and mother,...
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Do You Greet or Meet With Jesus?
Our church has started a meet and greet time during the service as many churches do. It is one of those things which make introverts run for the bathroom. Although it is a good practice f...
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We The Fickle
The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will. Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart. (Proverbs 21:1 ESV...
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Peter, Cornelius and a God Who Sees All
My husband is a fan of split screens and simulcasts. The more the merrier. One corner of the TV can play a football game, while the opposite corner shows something completely different. T...
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Grandsons, Scooters, and Laying Down the Law
“Put me in jail, put me in jail,” our six year-old grandson shouted. “Put me in jail, Gramma,” The boy’s scooters whizzed by, daring me to move out of the way, challenging me to capture l...
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Do you Worry about What Might Happen?
So, my husband moved the big trash container outside, you know the move-once-a-week hunker on wheels? It’s a job he accomplishes without thinking much about what might or could happen. We...
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It’s Our 50th Wedding Anniversary
“He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it.” (1 Thessalonians 5:24 NKJV) 50. The Big 5-0. 5 Decades. A Half Century. As a bride, I had no idea. I thought people who had been marri...
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When God Seems Remote
I was my big brothers’ TV remote. I can still hear their call. Through the bleaching heat waves of Kansas, over the baked and cracked ground, their summons reached me. Underfoot brown far...
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Are You Barely Hanging On?
“Just hang on,” he told me. I was at the wrong end of a washing machine stuck cattywampus in the stairwell half-way down to the basement. The heavy metal box towered above as I tried to h...
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Safely Shadowed Under His Wings
A shadow, long and wide, interrupted the sunshine for just a moment and then glided over the bright green foliage. My grandson and I squinted into the blue above us. We saw the outstretch...
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Am I Still Your Favorite Mother?
You were at boarding school and we were six hours from you in our ministry. Our first and oldest to fly from home, you seemed far too young, and we felt so unready. But, the label “Missio...
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Demolition Day is Like Party Time
If you are a fan of home improvement networks like I am, you are well acquainted with the satisfaction some people get from Demolition Day. It’s like party time. However, although I enjoy...
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God Moves Behind the Scenes
We all have them, markers of good and bad in our lives. April marks our spot. It’s another anniversary of when life altered through our daughter’s illness. I often wish I could box up our...
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God’s Light Pierces the Darkest Grief
Our last few weeks have been ones of weeping with those who weep as we’ve watched dear friends mourn the loss of a beloved son. Yet, they have also been days of seeing glimpses of pure gl...
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Do People See Who You Really Are?
“Is that your son?” I asked pointing to the little guy who had just scored on my grandson’s soccer team. Strangers to one another, we’d been standing side by side echoing with the same gr...
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Nothing Can Eclipse God’s Glory
In August of 2017 an eclipse marked our path in Kansas City, Missouri, where we lived. I wrote about it on a blog then. Today, we live in Virginia, not smack in the center, but still near...
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The Victorious Crown of Thorns
We call them “thorny situations.” They describe something we’d usually rather avoid. Because thorns hurt. Because a situation wrought with barbs and little wiggle room is bound to bring p...
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Is It Too Heavy?
“It’s too heavy,” he whined. His little hands strained to lift a fat rough log. He wanted to imitate his grandpa who seemed to hoist them like twigs into a wheelbarrow. The red cheeks of...
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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...
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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 th...
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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 bla...
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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...
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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...
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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. Bu...
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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 s...
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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 arch...
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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, be...
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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 gla...
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2024 is Ready, Are You?
A much younger me studied the face that stared back from the mirror. Outside of the bathroom, where I’d taken refuge, a squalling hurricane had erupted. My toddler daughter banged her fis...
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