Media mania returned to our house this Christmas season. With the return of the Even-Taller College Sophomore Erik, the span of our kids’ ages seemed to expand again to the far edges – making the official suggestion of Parental Guidance all but impossible.
-
-
Yehaaaaa! Roller Coasters got nothin’ on 2011. Good thing we love the ride and trust its maker with our life! Three family passings, and moment-by-moment opportunities to turn over our fear to our loving and creative God. I don’t know where I’d find peace – as a parent of a traveling, far-away college athlete, a beautiful 13 year old who’s…
-
Our little guy Jack isn’t shy. At 6-years-old, he is typically outgoing and quick to leap into the game. Any game. (this maybe a problem during the teenage years…. Stand by) So there we were: St. Columban’s Catholic church, attending Christmas Eve mass to honor Mom. Far from home.
-
December 23. Christmas !!!!!!! It’s here. We’ll celebrate at home tonight even though it’s two nights before the 25th. We’ll read the Christmas Story and just BE together. Food and gifts, yes. But more: our faces our hearts.. love. We’ll be together. And it’ll take some work.
-
Today I honor my husband. One year ago today his decision changed everything. As magnificent head of our home and pillar of strength, he pulled in. He allowed it to happen. He allowed God to invade deeper truths. We took time. Weeks and weeks of study and prayer and growth. Sometimes painful and always holy.
-
Every day we get another chance to adjust our settings; turn the dials of our vision, our focus, our intention, our daily starting point. When we are overly focused (read: obsessed) on the person-to-person interactions, we are choosing to live horizontally. This often results in serious side-effects: frustrations, worries, expectations and, on good days certainly, even delightful joy and thrilling…
-
I got caught shoplifting when I was 18 years old. I know, I know. REALLY late-bloomer. The security guard’s cold hand clenched my left wrist as I attempted to leave the store without paying for the pair of jeans that hid in my bag. The crime took place in a Hudson’s department store in 1980 in a middle-class suburb of…
-
Lots of folks have written smart expository about the greatest change agent in history. Jesus of Nazareth was the original agent of change. God’s in the business of change. Wait. God’s in the BUSINESS of change. Or better still: God’s in the CHANGE business. For commercial and organizational success, we write wonderful books about Switching, Changing, and getting Good to…
-
Is your happiness every day dependent on the actions reactions, expectations or desires of other people? … at all? Quit it! Here’s a PEP TALK for Monday: Choose to Be Grateful. Offer gratitude for the basics that we all have and sometimes forget, but also offer gratitude for the tough things that make us stronger. This is…
-
My reticular activator might be offline for maintenance. Perhaps it’s “normal” for us to have what seems like obvious connections in our deeper mind and heart but we ourselves don’t intellectually see the connection until our reticular activator gets the message…. sometime much later. Which probably isn’t technically how the RA works. Hmmm. I know I have certain realities tucked…
-
was the day she died. stand by while I regain my equilibrium.
-
Two Sisters Both 45 years old. There’s a delightful story as to how one family can have two sisters both 45 and not twins. It’s a good one. It’s mom-marrying-uncle and we’re not from Kentucky (because people have asked). That’s more for later. It’s about two sisters who were cousins and childhood pals. The little ones. Among eleven kids, they…
-
A train from Detroit to Chicago in 1955. A transatlantic passenger ship from Liverpool to Ellis Island in the same year. Each of these simple, everyday passages carried a young, scared teenager who would soon come together to establish life’s direction for another generation of people. Today, I can touch the words that were entered on the ship’s log as…
-
People often ask “how do we know what God wants for our life?” I tell the stories about how my life has transformed into new depths of peacefulness as well as more genuine excitement and NO-FAIR!-awesome opportunities. New friends nod with some assumption that it’s always been that way. “What a nice life. You’ve done well.” Nope. I’ve been rescued. …
-
What do you need God to shatter? What are we afraid to lose ? Will we ask Him, and allow Him to shatter that which we hold as obstacles to our true growth? It might hurt. It might mean we lose C O N T R O L of our moment. But it will mean that we will experience supernatural…
-
PLANS WELL MADE It’s somewhere between 4 and 5am and we’re camping. Actually we’re staging ourselves for an early arrival to the Wheatland Music festival that starts tomorrow and we’re on Take #9 of trying to beat the morning queue. We rented the same reliable 35’ trailer we’ve used for a few years (which we now consider ours) and we…
-
We did it. All kids are all in school. Even, presumably, the two in college; and the tallest one who’s in North Carolina. I now sit with this moment that I’ve projected tasks into for weeks. “When school starts I will have more structured time to get done what I need to get done.” Often said in the context of…
-
My precious mother-in-law sent an email this morning with a link to a famous and stirring video by AndiesIsle and as I watched it, the enormous gift of her constant love wove through my insides like a living, breathing vine. As parents, we give bits of ourselves to our children from the moment they are conceived, and every day throughout…
-
It’s August. It must be spring. And why not! We’re heading into a week of vacation, coming out of a season of redefining “intentional” ( how intentional are we really?). Let’s celebrate renewal … and another opportunity to begin. Today. Tomorrow Eldest Son leaves for his road trip back to the U in Portland, and the excitement for the adventure,…
-
How can this be? Flooded with a new blessing. Understanding grace as it overcomes me with a love and forgiveness undeserved. Gifts of love on this earth that shock me with joy. Each time I feel a new sense of my on weakness(es!), I am simultaneously washed with the blood – the unmistakable and unfathomable love of God. I see…