This Christmas seems to have arrived incredibly quickly! I know the number of days and weeks and hours are exactly the same as Christmases past but somehow, the day set aside to celebrate our Savior’s birth is only one week away. The seventy degree day has further confused my senses. I’m making preparations for our …
Spit It Out
Ezra is a spitter like his daddy before him. He eats and he’s happy, he spits up and he’s still happy. His mama tries everything to prevent it. She burps him, props him, holds him upright, lets him lie down and still he spits up. He will grow out of it soon but not soon …
Where Are You?
“Want to play hide and seek, Thomas?” asked Amelia as she propped her forehead on her hands against the stone column on the front porch. “Yes,” he answered, striding over to take her exact posture on the opposite side of the same column as she began to count. The moms and I looked at each …
Leveled
I came home to find a bare spot in my front yard. The extent of the gap wasn’t apparent until daylight the following morning. Autumn and the falling leaves always lets a little more light in from each sunrise but this was a new level of illumination. Even the room darkening shades were no match …
Privileged
“Are you full yet?” I asked. “Not yet,” Thomas grinned. I hugged him tighter and asked, “How about now? Are you full up to your elbows? Your shoulders? Your ears?” I teased in succession, finally tilting his head to peek inside each ear. Teaching Thomas and Amelia passages like 1 John 4:19, “We love because …
Sincerely Yours
The year my daughter turned thirteen, she and I stood in line in the dark in a cold, misting rain outside Target on Thanksgiving until the store opened at midnight. She had birthday money burning a hole in her pocket and I agreed to take her to one store. The aisles were lined with televisions, …
Get Up, Old Man
My Papa taught me many things over the course of his lifetime. I was barely writing numbers and he was explaining algebra and geometry, not by name but by practical application. He took me to work with him at Cone Mills more than once and proudly showed me how every piece of equipment worked and …
Can I Trust You?
My life from age twelve asked, “Can I trust you?” I asked myself this of every human being I encountered, particularly males. Everyone became suspect, even God. I fear I am not alone in my questioning. You have been hurt, have you not? Your trust has been shaken by sickness, circumstance, or sin in the …
The Wrong Side of the Bed
Amelia has never been a great sleeper but at two, her inconsolable acid hours gravitated from evenings to mornings. You just never know whether she will wake all smiles, thoroughly rested and ready for the day or refuse breakfast with wails and sobs that defy consolation. Some mornings she just wakes up on the wrong …
Talking Myself Into It
After a dozen zoo trips in his second year, Thomas decided at three that he would feed the giraffes by himself. I’d held him while the imposing head reached through the rails and the long black tongue snaked out to take the greens from my outstretched hand. He talked about it after each visit, claiming …
A Fitting Reply 