I loved my grandmother’s hands. Her nails were always beautifully shaped, just naturally. My daughter has the same hands. They are lovely and I like to look at them. As my grandmother got older I used to pinch the loose skin during church and feel the softness of the aging. She was so tactile. She …
You know that Kanye song, All of the Lights? “Cop lights, flash lights, spot lights, Strobe lights, street lights, (All of the lights, all of the lights)” How about the check engine light? Mine has been lit up for six months. It’s a faulty O2 sensor and not essential to my commute. Nevertheless, I just …
I was a “gifted” little kid. The kind who got to get out of class to sit in a room with other gifted kids and do special gifted things. I was a little snob. I was a people pleasing little kid. The kind who never got corrected by a teacher and rarely by a parent. …
I think about boundaries a lot. I talk about boundaries fairly often. I wouldn’t say I am obsessed with boundaries, but some people have accused me of being so. Maybe because I didn’t discover this concept until so late in life that it has taken a decade to get the riff-raff out of my yard …
Life hacks. Kitchen hacks. Studying hacks. Gardening hacks. Budgeting hacks. What’s with all the hacks? Are there really any shortcuts when doing anything meaningful? And even if there were hacks, would I actually take them? As previously established, life is inherently inconvenient, but it is precisely that which makes it beautiful. We are all called …
This morning in liturgy the phrase “Indeed, religion with contentment is a great gain” (I Timothy 6:6) hit me like a soft pillow to the face. For a moment, I felt like everything would be OK. I felt like at that very moment, should Jesus have given me a vibe check, I would have passed. …
When I said, “My foot is slipping,” your unfailing love, Lord, supported me.When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought me joy. (Psalm 94:18-19) You’ve heard the saying attributed to so many people, I don’t actually know who said it first, to be kind because everyone you meet is fighting an uphill battle. Oh, it shows up on Instagram …
Unanswered Prayers What do you think happens to all the audacious prayers you prayed in your reckless overconfidence? Especially the ones you abandoned when it appeared that God didn’t hear you, what happened to those? Are they kept somewhere, gathering heaven dust? Or are they looked after by your guardian angel like little seeds in …
“God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of himself.” (Thomas Merton) But am I true to that word? Or do I impose sanctions against myself in an empty attempt to manage myself to my myself and to my world. Someone recently told that they loved me and I thought, “Do you love …
Technology and social media have this lovely little trick of reminding you exactly what you were doing on this day in past years. These last few days have been interesting to relive. Last year I was walking through the heartbreaking tragedy of divorce. Divorce can be such an isolating thing, causing a tidal wave of …
reconciling things 