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
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
For Trent & Alli It takes seven months to build one, Google says,maybe eight.I suppose that would be true of a cut-n’-paste—one of those kits constructed just as soonas the paper models Trent used to glue togetherin one afternoon. If anyone would know, it’d be the two of you,wouldn’t it?That Rome wasn’t built in just … Continue reading How To Build a House
This piece was written for the April issue of the Lee Creek Baptist Church newsletter. Across from the church where I grew up, there was a cemetery on the corner. I remember passing it one Easter Sunday on our way to service--on one of those sharp, spring mornings when the light is strong. The tombstones … Continue reading My Flesh Will Dwell in Hope
This piece was written for the December issue of our church's newsletter, Grace & Peace. One day a few years ago, I found myself sitting on the first floor of a doctor’s building, talking to a lady named Darlene. It was a few weeks before Christmas, and rain was blowing against the big windows, wet … Continue reading In the Waiting Room
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
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
A month or so before we started dating, Jared offered to send me seeds in the mail. This surprised me, because I didn’t know many guys who planted gardens. I knew fewer who had an abundance of heirloom seeds on hand. When I thought about it, Jared was the only guy I’d ever talked to … Continue reading Seeds in the Mail
When I was six years old, my dad took me to visit a man in the hospital whose name was Kirk. Kirk was one of Dad’s closest friends. They had a Paul and Timothy kind of brotherhood, where Kirk had broken free from a stormy past and become one of Dad's greatest mentors in the … Continue reading Visiting Kirk
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