Say I’m sorry. An earnest apology is a healing balm. Keeping score hurts you more than the other. You’re on the same team. Your positions in the game of life may shift with time, but you have the same goals: raising kids, putting food on the table, etc. Act like teammates. God has made each…… Continue reading Thoughts on a marriage.
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A Focus on Glory
I am so stinking cold. The wood stove broke. We have other heat but the nipping edge of winter crept through the house and in my bones. The children are cranky; kept up too late the evening before. I’m tired, too. But the unrest is superficial and the discomfort a scapegoat. The feelings underneath the…… Continue reading A Focus on Glory
Gifts
God gave a gift and yet it feels like I’m slogging through wet cement. My teeth are dirty. I woke up late. More or less dressed heading out the door; less on the bottom half: flannel pajama bottoms now wet around the cuffs from morning dew grass. Groggy as the fog is thick. I can’t…… Continue reading Gifts
Soy Sauce & Anger
My mother-in-law asked, as I prepared dinner, if we should save empty chicken breast packaging. The plastic wrapper torn jagged. Its bottom littered with white clumps of fat and red veins cut. The absorbent pad discolored and swollen pink with raw meat juice. Is this something to be saved? No, I tell her; it’s trash.…… Continue reading Soy Sauce & Anger
Prayer at the Lake
The wind blows hard. Relentless on my face, legs, arms, hair. It blows strong across the lake, with extra poofs of power at intervals as regular and as unpredictable as the waves it creates. Even the ducks look off kilter today: their normally smooth glide knocked sideways, pushed askew. I had in mind a lazy…… Continue reading Prayer at the Lake
Dirty Napkins
Today I found a dirty paper napkins in with fresh ones. We had just finished eating. Shirley rose from the table while the two littler kids were still eating. A nightly battle; silent. Which of us will clean up after dinner. She won tonight. Beat me to the kitchen. Fine. It’s her kitchen. I get…… Continue reading Dirty Napkins
Wholly God
My pastor is in a John series; this week, chapter seven, second half, was titled “The Call of Christ”. The call of Christ is determinitive, he said. Determinitive. What does that mean, I wondered. That word: determinitive. To determine. We, humans, cannot determine who He, God the Father Christ the Son, is. God did that…… Continue reading Wholly God
Respite in a Waiting Room
God brought respite in the entrance of a hospital; a makeshift waiting room when waiting rooms don’t exist in a Covid world. Vermont grey, a February morning. Is it raining? It’s 28 degrees. It’s cold but the bitter has snapped. Kind of like my attitude. I dreaded the trip. Three hours of waiting around the…… Continue reading Respite in a Waiting Room
Chalk Board
Echos of our former life ring in the drip from the kitchen sink. “Saturday” is scrawled on the chalk board. Empty. Hallow. Inauthentic because we do not live here anymore. We pass through on our way back to there. My mother-in-law’s house. “Saturday” mocks. How long has it been since regularly scrawling the day’s name,…… Continue reading Chalk Board
The Purpose of Trials?
Dear Heavenly Father, What are you teaching me? At what step in the sanctification process are we? Can it be over yet? I’m over this trial. Are we learning “Peace in all circumstances”? How about “Holding one’s tongue”? Perseverance? Pride? So earthly, so human, are the things on which I dwell. Like a child: are…… Continue reading The Purpose of Trials?
Confessions of a Sinner 