‘Tis the season. I’ve heard that phrase said a lot these past few weeks. And it hasn’t been in reference to twinkling lights or pumpkin spice lattes. It hasn’t been because of Christmas decorating, shopping, or singing “fa-la-la-la” either. No, it’s been said with furrowed brow and tired eyes—‘tis the season. With weary arms and slumping shoulders—‘tis the season. It’s been voiced in resignation, spoken with sighs [...]

I watched out the window as a bitter wind blew the last of the leaves off my favorite crabapple trees. They tumbled away in sad auburn splendor. They crinkled and crunched down the street like a forced applause from hands wanting more, from a solitary audience disappointed by the show’s abrupt untimely end. This season has been like that for me. Like a wild rush that expired [...]

Have you ever wondered how two people can experience the exact same circumstances and yet walk away feeling very different things? Yet it happens. Ten men were healed of leprosy as Jesus walked along on His way to Jerusalem. Ten men encountered Jesus, called out to Him in a loud voice together asking, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us” (Luke 17:13). And He did. He healed them [...]

Have you ever wished life were a Hallmark movie? You know the kind where conflict gets eclipsed by perfectly styled hair and sorrow quickly fades by the knowledge that everything will work out just fine in the end? It’s so predictable, so controllable. And, to be honest, I’d like a little more of that in my life. But real life isn’t a Hallmark movie. It’s hectic and [...]

I sat down at the breakfast table, oversized mug of coffee in my hands. Déjà vu, I said out loud to the piles of laundry, the meal making, the messes I swear I cleaned just yesterday. Today was a new day, yet it felt old. It was a new morning, but it felt inconsequential, insignificant somehow. Does any of this matter? Am I really making a difference? [...]

Wild mushrooms grow all over my neighborhood this time of year, and nearly always they appear in circles, sometimes big, sometimes small. Even though this phenomenon has ties to ancient European folklore, when I see it, I only think of one thing. Life is better lived together. That’s what these mushrooms teach me. Life is better when we intentionally connect, when we circle up in relationship with [...]

In darkness, I sit on the floor of my sick son’s bedroom watching over him. I watch for signs of slumber. For quiet breathing, inhale and exhale. For no more squirming, indications of stillness and rest. I adjust the trash can (the “spit up” bucket) on the floor next to me just in case. I feel my son’s forehead for the hundredth time and place his favorite [...]

It’d been one long day as I pulled my car into the garage. The kids jumped out like jackrabbits and sprinted into the house. Through the door, I watched their shoes fling this way and that. I saw a pile of unzipped backpacks and soggy lunch boxes form as their shadows escaped down the hallway toward the living room. Through it all, I just sat there. Alone. [...]

I. The. And. You. Such simple words. Such seemingly insignificant words. Yet these four words are the most commonly spoken words of the English language, making them incredibly important for all of us. We use them so often, in fact, we hardly acknowledge their presence in spite of the reality that communication hardly happens without them. In the same way, our familiarity (or overfamiliarity) with many other [...]

“I’m on my way!” That’s all the text said, as I read it through sweat and tears and shaking hands. I stood on the side of a hot, busy street with arms wrapped around my three crying children. The firemen had already begun pushing our mangled SUV out of the way so lines of impatient back-to-school shoppers could continue on their way. And I kept thinking, how [...]

“Doubt is the skeleton in the closet of faith,” Philip Yancey writes in Reaching for the Invisible God. And it certainly rings true for me too. I hide the doubt in my inner soul closet on spiritually good days when everything is going well. And on those bad days, when traumatic circumstances cause me to question God's goodness, I try hard not to let it out. I [...]

Life has sure felt like a battle lately. Has it for you? I don’t mean the blockbuster-movie kind. The kind where tall heroes stand in line while raspy baritone voices shout the battle cry “Charge!” and grandiose orchestral music crescendos them on toward victory. No, I mean the other kind. The kind from the foxhole. The kind where soldiers sit in mud on wooden crates of mice-infested [...]

Every week, my husband cuts a bright, red rose for me from our rose bushes that grow in a mulch patch in our backyard. He never tells me he’s going to do it (although sometimes he holds a rose up for me to smell). He never draws attention to the little glass vase sitting unobtrusively on our kitchen island either. He simply cuts the stem, slides a [...]

Sometimes I wonder if Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego saw Jesus in the fire. Oh, He was there. Protecting them. Supernaturally intervening for them. But when King Nebuchadnezzar threw these young men into that blazing furnace after they wouldn’t bow down before him, all we’re told in scripture is the king himself sees Jesus, not these boys. The king, the one standing outside the fire, is the one [...]

“Hold! Hold!” A little boy cried, his hands reaching toward me as I walked into the toddler classroom one Sunday morning for my regular volunteer shift. His parents had just dropped him off, and he was struggling. He didn’t want to play blocks, drive cars, or cook in the little play kitchen with the other kids. Only arms around him—even those of a stranger—would do. Have you [...]

Sun and moon. Have you ever noticed they look exactly the same size in the earth’s sky? The sun is actually four hundred times larger than the moon, but the moon is four hundred times closer to earth than the sun. Hence, they both appear to have the same exact circumference. A coincidence, astronomers call it. Some bit of random chance. A lucky anomaly. But what would [...]

I’ve felt pecked at a lot these days. Have you? Pricked by the not-good-enough vibes. Cut down by hasty words spoken, negative thoughts zinging, social media feeds touting unrealistic pictures of beautiful women with smoother complexions cooking better meals saying catchier catch-phrases than what I could ever possibly achieve. All I want to do is pull the covers back up over my head sometimes. At least when [...]

This summer I’ve been trying to teach my daughter to swim. She’s terrified of deeper water, however. In fact, one day after many lessons and hours of practice, I challenged her to wade out with me to a deeper area of the pool. We both could still touch the bottom, yet she screamed, “Why are you doing this to me?” To be honest, I was startled by [...]