I watched one afternoon in October to see my neighbor’s chainsaw whir and whine and whistle clean through the trunk of his tree, and I felt the wrongness of it, as he stood on a ladder to dismantle it limb-by-limb. “I was putting off knowing it. All that day there had been a crashing in … Continue reading Upon the Death of a Bradford Pear
We stood at my grandma Karen’s grave on Palm Sunday, the wind matting the grass and making all the fake grave flowers tremble. Dad brought a bundle of daffodils from Papa Larry’s garden, and as he tucked them in the granite vase, I said I hoped they wouldn’t blow away. But it’s early April and … Continue reading Grave Flowers
A True Story from Home It happens every eight seconds, they say, but it’s no less weird and wonderful. I’ve never seen a baby be born, but my big sister has— twelve of them, actually. She earned her birth assistant’s certificate because she’d grown up the oldest sister, the babysitter, the Meg March of the … Continue reading Winter In Her Womb
Dear Lord, I am not the gardener I was in March, when the earth was thawing, and I stood on a blank slate, and the only green things were the points of the bulbs. I had springtime hopes, just as I always do. When I thought about August, I saw myself filling Wal-Mart bags with … Continue reading A Gardener’s Lament
The people I know say they’ll never forget where they were when the first tower fell, then the second. Mom says she was in her room, I was on her bed, and she was changing me. I’d only been around for seven months and already wore a birthmark of the world; 2001 was a year … Continue reading Never Forget It
December 13 Read: Luke 2:8-11 & John 16:20-22 I was still deciding what I could give up for Lent last winter when God chose for me— for all of us. He took my sister’s unborn baby after just ten days inside her. Leanna miscarried on Ash Wednesday, but we’ve gone without that little one for … Continue reading The Shadows Before Sunrise
March 15 The world is bleeding, your sin makes you groan, you’re restless for the Day when Jesus renews all things. Maybe “Your kingdom come” is a prayer you’ve adopted. I mentioned last week that I’ve been thinking more about the kingdom and praying for it to come soon. But my study of Psalm 119 … Continue reading Part Two: Why Do You Pray These Three Words?
Two thousand years ago a sinless man set his face toward Jerusalem. He heaved a cross on his shoulders and climbed a hill outside the city gates. He let seething men drill nails through his veins. He hung against the wood, bleeding, gasping, dying, forsaken. He bore the foaming ocean of God’s wrath so we … Continue reading Meditation, Celebration, and a Good Friday Playlist
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