The sky was blue and so was the mood in the drop-in center. Everyone kind of moped, here on Main Street, in this place where the homeless and vulnerable gather daily for cheap meals and free conversation. I came in as I always do, Wednesdays at lunch, to sit at the long rectangular table and…
“Yes to your snotty mess coming on Saturday. That would be glorious!” was the text I sent to my one sister, hours before her arrival. Holidays are messy. There’s no way around it. Loved ones spill into our hallways and living rooms and bedrooms, filling them with the sounds of laughter and sniffly noses and…
Her name is Princess. She’s maybe 15. Her face hangs old, on a young body, like someone has swapped heads on a doll, and she’s seated on a bench by McDonald’s, leaning sideways, propped up by some invisible hand. The air smells like stale french fries. I stop and sit and ask her name. She…
“Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:15). I’m eating caramel cake and my friend is drinking a Huckleberry latte. The sun flirts with the clouds, and I flirt with my army green jacket. Passersby come and go,…
The fire curls like a Scarlet Paintbrush, streaking the night with oranges and reds. Our men are at the picnic table with oldest sons, playing a board game, and we’re huddled in old flannel and old sweaters swapping dreams like recipes in this campground by the river. The air smells like burnt marshmallows. We hear…
It’s one of those days – all gray and grouchy, the sun seeming to have pulled the sheets over its head and gone back to sleep. I’m sipping coffee on my yellow recliner, trying to feel as happy as the chair looks. And that’s when she calls. “Emily?” my pastor’s wife says. “I made you…
Some call it the witching hour. That lost piece of time, like a forgotten tune, tucked between pages of homework, serving supper and filling the tub, the space between unpacking the dishwasher and packing school lunches, brushing little teeth and saying prayers and quickly washing clothes because your oldest son has run out of pants…
It’s called Flower Lane. It’s a storefront lined with windows along Main Street. I’ve walked past it more than a decade, skipping across the cracks in the sidewalk with my children, always wondering, never checking, if it was, in fact, a store that sold flowers. Then God told me to start a Bible study there….
I look across the room at him and smile. He’s sporting a Wolverine-type look, hair bushy along the jawline, absent on the chin for when he wears a mask to teach math. We’ve been married more than 18 years and we’re like salt and pepper; me with my soft, quiet mannerisms, him with his loud…
“The people who walked in darknessHave seen a great light;Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death,Upon them a light has shined” Isa. 9:2, NKJV I find a stick, carved, from a branch by the side of the road where we’ve broken down. The engine popped, a lack of coolant and other…
“Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold” (Matt. 24:12). The night is snowy, and I see them emerging from the garage, two little tow-headed boys, the taller gripping the hand of the smaller. They’ve come to live with us while their mom gets help. Their eyes are large as…
We’re crouched in the dark, gently bending over the antique incubator. I hear a faint chirping, and my husband lifts the metal lid. There’s a bowl of water inside to keep the eggs soft, and the air smells like warm, wet grass. Inside, a newly hatched chick bravely stands, singing his baby victory songs. And…
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