I duck my head to avoid the low hanging branches and catch a spider’s web across my face. A few weeks ago, the leaf canopy was invisible; the #path bright with sunlight. Now sunlight dances across the darkened #path as saplings, weighted with spring leaves, lean in to greedily soak in the sun’s rays. These …
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 …
Signs and Wonders
I didn’t expect my fig tree to bear fruit in its second year, yet somehow it bloomed well past its growing season. By winter, I counted at least twenty figs. They never reached peak size nor did they ripen. The first frost left the fruit exposed on bare limbs where they remain. The people in …
If Only
My mind runs ahead of me all day everyday. As I’m washing dishes or folding laundry, eating my breakfast or driving, if I’m not engaged in conversation (and sometimes even when I am) I am thinking ahead. I’m making plans with contingencies for every possibility I can imagine. When everything is going according to plan, …
Keeping Appointments
In the early weeks after my cancer diagnosis, I endured multiple doctors’ appointments each week. Once my radiation began last November, I visited the cancer center daily, five days a week, excepting weekends and holidays for twenty-eight days. Chemotherapy meant seeing the doctor and having labs drawn on Monday, a four hour session in the …
Faith With Feet
“Imagine a world where our beliefs weren’t just something that happened in our heads and hearts- but became something powerful we did with our hands and feet.” ~Jennifer Dukes Lee We all yearn for a life of significance. Truth be told, we want to matter. We long to leave our mark on the world, but …
A Life Changed
One year ago, I didn’t know I would be a grandmother and I had no idea I had cancer. The day before I met my daughter-in-law’s family for the first time, I had my initial screening colonoscopy recommended at age fifty. I wish I’d had one sooner. I was diagnosed with stage three colorectal cancer …
Defining Moments
Becoming a grandmother has quickly become one of those moments in life that changes everything! I’ve spent months preparing for it and thinking about it and still it seems surreal. I’ve looked forward to our grandson’s arrival since a few weeks after his conception, but until I held him in my arms, I didn’t really …
Insurance
When I was in 5th grade, the Gideons still came into public schools to distribute personal New Testaments to any child who wanted a copy of God’s Word free of charge. I don’t remember anyone in my class declining the offer and we each went home that day with God’s Word in hand, imitation leather …
Parched
Patches of brown grass crunch beneath my feet. The sunsets I love are harshest on my backyard. The soil was prepared for bermuda sod this time last year but a heavy rain the night before washed ruts down the gentle slope, leaving the ground underneath uneven. I walk the two hundred feet from fence to …
A Fitting Reply 