I am sick, isolated, feeling hopeless. The world tells me I am unwanted, unloved, worse; unneeded. That I am useless, a drain on society’s resources, on my caring husband’s time. A waste of space and breath. It does not say these things out loud or in full, but nevertheless I feel the hot breath of…
Dear Friends, I don’t really consider myself to have a green thumb. I love plants and keep many around my house—as long as I can keep my cats from chewing on them—and our yard is filled with foliage. But every once in awhile, something dies, and I don’t have a clue why. One such plant…
The original Plan—perfect but rejected. Sending hope cascading like a slinky toy down a staircase, coiling, tumbling, coiling, tumbling landing in a tangled heap. The same Plan—a different approach set into motion, to reclaim, and restore hope, unfurling it from earth to far beyond the stars. Unfolding, revealing year after year, a tender plant, growing…
I was on a hike in a Florida nature preserve when my friend pointed out trees whose limbs were wrapped with brown, shriveled, lifeless leaves. “These are Pleopeltis polypodioides, commonly called resurrection ferns. They can survive up to 100 years without water, and revive after a single exposure to moisture,” he explained. We celebrate Resurrection…
“Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” Ephesians 5:14 (NIV). I’ve heard the question “How is Christ’s death and resurrection affecting your everyday life?” And I wonder, Is it? When I think of the phrase “resurrection life” I think of the new struggles I face as a believer. I…
My brother knocked on my bedroom door at our childhood home. “It’s happening,” he said. I jumped out of bed, threw on a sweatshirt, and ran downstairs to my parents’ room. All my siblings and I had moved away from home years before. But that week, we’d returned to the house with the cedar siding…
Staring at Death’s Face She gazed down the way, searching for his familiar form. Surely he’ll be here, she whispered, willing her words to make it so. “Come quickly,” she’d said. “Your friend is sick.” Two days. It’d been two days since she sent word. Where was he? Didn’t he care? Her pace quickened as…
“If you walk along here,” he said, tracing the tip of his pen along the shoreline, “you should be able to see the seals lying out on the sandbar. And here,” the pen stopped, “there’s a little shack people have assembled over the years. We always point it out, but some recent guests told us…
All along, Thought I was learning how to take How to bend not how to break How to laugh not how to cry— But really I’ve been learning how to die. -Jon Foreman, Learning How to Die I held up the gingerbread patterned nail file I’d received in my Christmas stocking and said, “This is…
I plant seeds on a cold February day, imagining a garden some months in the future. I pinch the tiny seeds out of their packets, some no bigger than a flake of black pepper, carefully pushing them beneath the soil in the miniature peat pots. I water them “generously,” as the Farmers Almanac suggests, then…
I stood in the middle of the store and felt a deep sense of satisfaction: that’s the one. That’s her Easter dress. Three generations of girls gathered that day at the American Girl® Place to celebrate a milestone birthday for my mom. It was a Saturday full of storytelling and laughter as we shared a…