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
Last night, my niece, Elsie, showed me a picture of what her new baby brother or sister might look like in the womb. It is just nine weeks tiny, with black eyes and hands and feet poking their way outward. “The baby is the size of an olive,” Elsie said. I tried to imagine holding … Continue reading The Size of an Olive
This may sound strange, but these days, I pray often for honeybees. Jared is a beekeeper and a businessman, so much of his success lies in the hives tucked in the corner of his property—in their brood, their comb, and the flow of their nectar in spring. When I said “yes” to dating him, I … Continue reading Bless These Hives
The cicadas have come, like a thousand sirens in the trees. I was ten last time they emerged from the ground en masse, littering the grass and molting on every tree. I was still wearing my brothers’ basketball shorts and running around sticking the bug shells on peoples’ shirts after church. I remember how we … Continue reading Year of the Locust
I watched one afternoon in October to see my neighbor’s chainsaw whir and whine and whistle clean through the trunk of his tree, and I felt the wrongness of it, as he stood on a ladder to dismantle it limb-by-limb. “I was putting off knowing it. All that day there had been a crashing in … Continue reading Upon the Death of a Bradford Pear
There is a basic qualification to be a volunteer Storm Spotter for the National Weather Service, and it is blessedly simple: Look up. Were anything more technical asked of me, I would not have taken the class; but as it is, I already spend a lot of time watching the sky. It turns out that … Continue reading Look Up
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
I read the Cape Cod Times during breakfast Monday morning, and the story was about a man who got swallowed by a humpback whale on June 11, 2021. He was lobster diving off Herring Cove Beach at 8 A.M. when something like a freight train hammered him and everything went black. He felt himself surging … Continue reading Lord of the Seas
There's a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted, and in March, I do a little of both. Winter is on its last leg, and I’ve been repairing, repotting, replanting, and rethinking the best ways to keep deer out of the garden this year. I realize there was a lot … Continue reading A Time to Plant
A True Story from Home Marilee and her sisters cooked up a storm in Aunt Emma’s kitchen— checkerboard cakes, popsicles made from fresh cow cream, and Aunt Emma’s squirrel dumplings. They’d haul vegetables in from the garden, eating the asparagus on their way back to the farmhouse. Marilee’s family lived in a Missouri suburb but … Continue reading Aunt Emma’s Kitchen
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