Sometimes, usually when I’m in the kitchen, I find myself thinking about my great-grandma Minerva, Papa Jay’s mom, who had a tight, little face, wore her black hair in a bun, and made him biscuits and gravy from scratch every morning. Papa is getting to an age when he can’t remember things well or often, … Continue reading A Long Line of Quiet Women
I used to go to church with a lady who got teary-eyed on September 11th, remembering how her husband could have easily flown as a pilot for United that day in 2001. As the Lord would have it, her husband wasn't working that morning, but Flight 93 that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania was a plane … Continue reading Where Were You?
One day a few years ago, I stood on the porch of a lady who'd just had surgery. I had both arms wrapped under a brown Aldi bag with jars of soup and a loaf of bread inside, and I was feeling rather small. As the lady's son took the paper bag and I warned … Continue reading Store Bought Hospitality
Books are a love language, and one of the ways Jared demonstrated his love for me early on was by lending me his pastoral library. I love books, Jared loves books (he has more than I do), and he’s always been generous with them. I’d come home from my visits to Arkansas with commentaries and … Continue reading Two Little Tributes
It was one of those mornings in June when the air was so thick you could almost bottle it like syrup and put it on your pancakes. In fact, I did have pancakes that morning. We'd loaded the van early, picked up my Nanny Karen, and stopped for breakfast at Perkins somewhere off the highway. … Continue reading A Good Soldier
On the Vocation of Nursing Jared and I spent one long week in the hospital back in February, watching his grandpa struggle to live. We stood at his bed rails all hours of the day, watching the nurses come, check, chart, rearrange IVs, then pass the clipboard of notes to the next nurse, then the … Continue reading Take Care
I called Mom from the kitchen the other morning while doing four things concurrently—telling her about the weekend, emptying the sink of dishes, washing towels and bedsheets, and making a grocery list. I was also thinking about how I needed to water the garden, make the bed, and take out the compost bucket. Mom herself … Continue reading Wife & Mother
My good friends lost their mom and grandma back in December. We are such good friends, in fact, that I'd only ever called her "Nana." Nana was known for her knitting and quilting, so at her memorial, her family hung her quilts in their kitchen for folks to look at. They filled a basket with … Continue reading She Knitted Things
After dinner last night, I came across a journal entry I wrote on October 20th of last year. Today was the Lord’s Day, it began—one of many that I have spent at Jared’s church. On that particular Sunday in autumn, we had read a Psalm on the drive to church; he’d set the thermostats while … Continue reading There and Back Again
On the week we were engaged, Jared and I were grocery shopping together when he got a text that nearly took the wind out of him. It was from a fellow pastor, asking if he'd heard the news: a preacher they both greatly respected, a stalwart leader and renowned expositor, had fallen to immorality. Overnight, … Continue reading Upon the Fall of a Pastor
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