This piece was written for the September issue of the Lee Creek Baptist Church newsletter, Grace & Peace. If you were to take a look at my living room end table, you’d find a stack of books with coupons and slips of paper tucked in them halfway through. This is because I have an old … Continue reading Visit Many Good Books
"Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks riseAround; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviourOf silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavierMeal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?" ~ Gerard Manley Hopkins, from "Hurrahing in Harvest" Good things in August: Fat rolls of hay in the fields Jared coming home from his shift at the … Continue reading Sunday Potlucks & Summer’s Long End
This article was written for the August issue of the Lee Creek Baptist Church newsletter, Grace & Peace. Since my miscarriage last summer, I’ve found myself having conversations of a similar shape with fellow sisters in Christ who are grieving or suffering a bitter loss. There are plenty of difficult things in the days following, … Continue reading A Song of Praise to Our God
I sowed a seed in doubtthat it could ever bloom---can a California poppy weatheran Arkansas high noon? I tended it with the resteach morning during spring,telling my hands in faith to worktoward a beauty I could not see. Midsummer came in jewels,the myrtles finely dressed,just as they were a summer beforewhen we laid our baby … Continue reading Where the Poppy Blooms
"Now is the heyday of summer: everything voluptuously in growth. It is the full, warm, robust middle age of the year, with good health and thriving normal life. The earth, ripe with products as well as promise, smiles now with full contentment." ~ David Grayson, The Countryman's Year A harvest of good things in July: … Continue reading Myrtle Blooms & July Afternoons
This piece was written for the July issue of the Lee Creek Baptist Church newsletter, Grace & Peace. With each year that I spend in the garden, I am more willing to prune fat, full, leafy plants. It’s one thing to pinch off dead and yellowed leaves when the seedlings are young in spring. It’s … Continue reading Freedom That Bears Fruit
One of my favorite places to visit growing up was Platt’s Nursery just up the highway from our neighborhood, where its greenhouses were perched on one of the highest points in town. Mom would take us there each spring to pick out impatiens, petunias, and hanging baskets. When the family-owned business shut down a few … Continue reading America the Beautiful
"[God] often makes the fairest flowers of man's endeavors to wither and brings improbable things to pass, in order that the glory of the undertaking may be given to Himself." ~ Jeremiah Burroughs Early June in the garden, when everything seems about to burst Driving Highway 22 with Jared on a Saturday morning to do … Continue reading Zinnias, Gingham, & Zucchini Season
This piece was written for the May issue of the Lee Creek Baptist Church newsletter, Grace & Peace. A few years ago, I heard the story of a woman who went into the hospital, only for no one from her church to come visit her. No one checked in. No one sent a card. Instead … Continue reading The Card Lady
The other day, I visited with a friend on the phone for an hour while I folded laundry and she fed lunch to her kiddos. There was a lot of background noise. There were pauses to shush a child or to keep them from pulling a chair down on themselves. As I folded napkins and … Continue reading Pick Up the Broom
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