1000Gifts
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moreWhen You Really Want to Really Live
On Friday, March 18 th, 2011H anding out bare bits of your heart is ridiculously hard. :: :: That’s what we did together these last few week. Shared our hearts. You were wildly gracious. And I can honestly say this: There were days I didn’t know how I’d keep breathing. :: :: Read the rest of over here at (in)courage… what it was like writing the book, what the last few weeks have really b...
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moreOf Jesus, Comfort Zones & the NYTimes BestSellers List
On Monday, February 28 th, 2011I hear it on Sunday, thinking the preacher’s looking straight at me, me trying to look away: “When God moves us out of our comfort zone —- into places that are way bigger than us, places that are difficult, hard, painful —- that even hurt — this is a gift. We are being given a gift. These hard places give us the gift of intimately knowing God in ways that would neve...
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morewhat is your life really magnifying?
On Thursday, February 17 th, 2011‘Some days I pick up a camera and the lens is my ink, for cameras have sensor eyes, and pixels record. I slide it into a pocket, a thin point-and-shoot, and find another way to chronicle, to force the lids open; another way to receive the moment with thanks reverential. When he comes in from the barn, The Farmer Husband finds me with my hammer in hand, leaning over a plat...
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moreCount the Ways He Loves
On Monday, February 14 th, 2011The dare to count a thousand graces becomes the ultimate Love Dare, counting all the ways He loves and counting blessings is how the moments whisper that you can count on God. Everyday’s the happiness of Valentine’s Day, His heart etched everywhere, and we are the people pursued by The Unrelenting Love, tender grace, a God Who writes His passion on His palms, your n...
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moreThe Beauty and Mystery of Life … Of Her
On Thursday, February 10 th, 2011‘Dad tells us a thousand times the story after dinner, how her eyes were water-clear and without shores, how she held his neck when she hugged him and held on for dear life… … the little sister who teased me and laughed. And the way she’d throw her head back and laugh, her milk-white cheeks dimpled right through with happiness, and I’d scoop close all her ...
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moreWhere the Happiness Is
On Monday, February 07 th, 2011Might after I read the story, I go looking for an old horn to screw right to the wall, because there are things worth the proclaiming. And after I find one, I walk around the house with the horn in hand trying to figure if it looks best on this wall? Or the back of this door? The Farmer raises his eyebrows. “A horn on a wall?” He’s grinning boyish. Joshua is playing scale...
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morewhat life is asking you to memorize today
On Monday, January 31 st, 2011When I walk through a greenhouse, air humid with summer exhales under a dome of glass in a sea of winter, and I breathe deep. The Farmer wanders aisles, his own green thumb itchy. Boys make plans for a million venus flytraps lining every room in the barn. I touch petals. I think how they are made of cells. All the small making all exquisite. There is DNA in m...
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morethe gift of learning to breathe
On Monday, January 24 th, 2011TThe words must always become flesh. Else they aren’t words but lies. Heaps of lines that that lie like skeletal remains, dry bones. On dark nights for over a year, I write a ream of papers, words whispering that all is grace and God is always good. And God, He orchestrates the stars that the week those words take wing into the world, my days-old niece stops breathing an...
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moreIt’s All for You : One Thousand Gifts {and trailer}
On Monday, January 17 th, 2011Mama’s sitting at the table in the midst of the din of ten of her grandchildren when I lean across the worn oak grain and hand her my first book. “It’s for you…” I say. My mouth feels dry… She runs her hand across the jacket. Her’s smiling all brimming. Like when I raced the 50 yard dash at the Brussels Fall Fair and...
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moreHow to Just Keep Breathing {on a Monday}
On Monday, January 10 th, 2011‘Tell me I can do this,” she says it into the phone. And I wait for her to breathe heavy through the mother wave cresting up around the child swelling and I say, “Yes, you can do it.” She’s in labor over love. Her body tightening, hugging a child into this world. It’s always fear that brings tension — the tension that brings the pain. ...
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morehow to begin a new year
On Monday, January 03 rd, 2011Every dawn is Day One. A new beginning. And gratitude is what makes the past a grace, here holy, and tomorrow a gift. On New Year’s Day, we wake to rain. The Farmer wraps his arm around me in the dark. “Hear it?” He whispers the words close. The window panes, the roof, they’re thrumming quiet with everything coming down in a song. “Mmmm…. ...
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morethe celebration doesn’t {have to} end
On Monday, December 27 th, 2010God comes naked and needy and it makes no human sense except God in the full weight of glory might crush us and God as a Babe, vulnerable and scandalously helpless, He draws all the weak and the limping near without fear. It’s really possible that Love might carry swaddled Deity in the crook of our hearts. And that’s when I think it on Christmas morning, when I bur...
