Water can shape a landscape. Rushing water carves out banks over time and riverbeds widen or new channels form. Trees fall creating natural bridges or obstructions. Stones are uncovered. Several days of heavy rain over the past week have carved a trench through our mulch bed. On a walk with my husband and our Great …
Fan the Flame
My freshman year, the egg in a bottle experiment was banned from the science fair. Overused and unoriginal were descriptors my teacher chose even though no one in my grade had seen it barring those with older sibling. That may have been when I first learned that a fire needs oxygen to burn because the …
Can You See?
My daughter and her husband both love ice cream. She always ribs him because he asks, “is yours good?” meaning he wants to taste hers too. She forgets that when she was small and said she wanted to share, it meant she wanted to taste ours. If I asked her for a bite, she would …
Simultaneously Present
My son and daughter-in-law and I stood on the water’s edge at the coast after dinner this week enjoying a video chat with my daughter and grandson in the mountains. He smiled as he recognized our voices and caught a glimpse of our faces. We watched as he pushed up onto hands and knees, ready …
Trust Obeys
“Come,” he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus.” Matthew 14:29 There are intersections in life where I’ve felt my voice and my influence waning. When my children began driving, preparing for college, and marriage- moments when their heads were turned and I prayed that …
Learning
Peekaboo with my six month old grandson has progressed from a quick distraction to a game of predictive analytics, much like the game my smart phone plays as I begin typing any given word into a text box. In spite of the fact that I have a son and a son-in-law named Jacob which I …
Whatever You Can Carry
By far my favorite scene of the 1998 movie EVER AFTER: A Cinderella Story with Drew Barrymore plays out in a dense wood. Prince Henry has been detained by a band of Gypsies while he is walking with Danielle(Barrymore). The leader of the Gypsies has taken Danielle’s dress from where it was discarded on the …
Feel The Heat
What does pure, unadulterated faith look like, the faith of a child that Jesus commended? I saw it in the face of my eighteen year old son and heard it in his voice, as we contemplated the possibility of brain surgery after eight years of tweaking and changing medications failed to stop his seizures. I …
Don’t Look At Me
Nobody ever believes me when I confess that when I was younger, I was painfully shy. I wanted to hide if anyone looked my direction, much less spoke to me and expected a reply. I preferred to blend into the crowd and watch from the sidelines. I’m not sure when that all changed, but I …
Walking Down Briers
When I received my cancer diagnosis and we found that I would need radiation and chemotherapy before having surgery to remove my tumor, my husband began walking with me and the Danes twice daily, weather-permitting, to keep my heart healthy for surgery. Our community has many well-groomed walking trails, but Paul began cutting a trail …
A Fitting Reply 