Dear Maggie, Thank you for your last letter. I read it on my walk back from the mailbox and my heart broke with yours. I am so sorry to hear about your friend, Lydia. It’s a sad, strange thing when an individual who made the good confession of faith and walked with other believers in … Continue reading When a Friend Walks Away
Our wedding came just two days after spring began, when the trees were still a tangle of bones against the butter-gold forsythia down by Papa's pond. So Jared and I came into the gardening season as stragglers. By the time we returned from our honeymoon, the daffodils were already blooming along our fence, and the … Continue reading The First Year
We saved pickling for the hottest afternoons in July, letting the big round thermometer beneath Papa Jay’s sunroom swing well over 90, the humidity souping up like the moss on his pond. It was a big job, with loads of cucumbers to harvest between our garden and Papa’s. Over a few weeks, Mom would save … Continue reading Pickling Day
They showed a map on TV the other night that over her lifetime, U.S. swimmer Katie Ledecky has nearly swum the circumference of the earth. She may as well have swum to Paris for the Olympics, I thought. But I wondered if all her training had felt that way---if, with each stroke, she felt herself … Continue reading Two Good Legs
Sitting across the coffee shop table from her, I cannot see the Spirit of God in her---just as I cannot see the wind that’s whipping up off the cold Missouri river this morning. I do not know where these January gales come from, or where they’ll lie down tonight. They’re sharp, cutting right through my … Continue reading Where the North Wind Blows
A True Story from Home The church sanctuary hummed, moms herding their kids in from nursery, guys in khakis talking deer hunting, and a blonde boy who got away, darting between folks’ legs with a Sunday school paper in hand. Anna stood at the front row, looking across the aisle to where her friends were … Continue reading Walking on Water
