The plant sitting by the door is drooping, bending low, almost touching the floor. I walk by the planter a dozen or more times, ignoring it until finally I grab my coffee cup, fill it with water and dump it all over the plant. The thirsty soil sucks the water like a sponge. I stand […]
Thankfulness Project
Sometimes in the middle of the day, I carve out some time. Just a ten or twenty minute break. To breathe life in. To enjoy this moment. To experience God’s creation in a way that takes my mundane and makes it new. Things used to be different. I’d say to myself, I don’t have […]
The Gift of Life from the Ashes
The Gift of Life from the Ashes She holds a necklace in her hand and talks of her son’s death. Slowly rolling the jewelry in her fingers, she reveals the truth: Her son’s ashes are in the necklace. It hangs close to her heart, close to her broken soul, but not close enough to heal the gaping wound […]
Gifts of Brokenness: What I Learned from the Death of my Son
This is the first part of a series on the Gifts of Brokenness—What I learned from the death of my son The leaves on the tree are yellow and orange, falling from the sky, soft as snow, leaving a carpet of autumn brilliance on the ground. My dog and I walk through them at the […]
Fruitful: How to make Something Meaningful out of our Pain
How to Bear Fruit From Our Pain On a windblown day, in the middle of bean fields and October skies, we pick apples at a farm along a gravel path. The sun is warm and the trees loaded, their boughs weighed down by the countless orbs of red and green. My daughter eats three apples […]