Doing Thanks
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moreHow to Really Live {Part 2} . . . . . . . . . . . {The Rest of the Story}
On Tuesday, August 14 th, 2012There are some stories you can’t quite get out of your head. Our last boy, he comes to me yesterday, crawls up on my lap and asks me in this whisper: “You know how you told us that story, Mama, about Kolbe? What happened to Gajowniczek afterward, Mama? After Kolbe said the Nazis could kill him instead of Gajowniczek? What happened right after?” The light is ...
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moreBecause if Us Christians Really Care……. And We Really Do — right?
On Thursday, August 02 nd, 2012It comes right when we’re at day 11 of praying our way through Ramadan. Us the the family living next door to Mennonites not Muslims, the women who wear bonnets not hijabs. The neighbors around here taking their horse and buggy to make a 4 mile pilgrimage to Sunday meeting, not any annual five thousand mile pirimage to Saudi’s Mecca. ...
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moreFor the greatest gift is becoming a gift…
On Thursday, May 10 th, 2012Mothering can spin you in these dizzy circles and who doesn’t need an encircling of grace? Women could do this for each other. Two years ago or so, I tell my firstborn of my crazy idea of this wooden wreath. A wr...
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moreWhat Every Mother has to Know …. {Before Mother’s Day}
On Monday, May 07 th, 2012Everything beautiful always begins with a willingness to suffer. Just ask any mother. When you’d bake up raspberry kuchen for Sunday afternoon dinner, you’d make two pans and you’d make more of who we are. You made double batches and you made beds and you made more of heaven on earth and a mother can do th...
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moreWhy Get Out Of Your Comfort Zone
On Monday, March 05 th, 2012Do not let anything keep you – not anything — from flinging out of that sagging comfort zone, and right into the streets, eyes and mouth full of His wonder, to pant it in the marketplace the back alleys, the front fields, ac...
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morewhen you’d really like to wear sheer joy
On Tuesday, November 15 th, 2011When Rosa’s youngest, little Liliana, scooped up that puppy right there next to the potato patch, she just hid behind his gaping mouth, eyes all large and laughing. Rosa told us what Liliana had done — that Liliana had found that puppy wandering abandoned — lost— outside her classroom. That Liliana had brought the puppy home to love. That Liliana loved. ...
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moreWhen You Are In Desperate Need of Hope
On Thursday, November 10 th, 2011It can come straight out of an empty sky – Hope like a cloud — only the size of a man’s fist. When I meet Lidia, when I cup her face and pull her near, and her mother stands right next to here, there in her white shirt. Her mother named Blanca and smiling. Blanca, Lidia’s mother come looking...
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moreWhen Thanksgiving Becomes Thanksliving …
On Tuesday, November 08 th, 2011The Farmer and I traveling with Compassion to Ecuador, slipped into our beds here in Quito this morning at 2 am after a day of travelling… us carrying this story from home and all the preparing to go, carrying it out now into the Ecuador streets… Thank you for traveling with us in these posts this week and taking the time to pray over the children… When she pu...
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more{Video Concert on the Farm}How the Poor & Rich Might find Release: The Release of a Third World Symphony
On Tuesday, August 30 th, 2011So it rains the day after he leaves. The day after he walks out of the wheat field, packs his guitar into that beat up, duct-taped case and heads south again, music on his mind. But Shaun Grove’s music, his songs stay behind. Playing loud on the stereo here the next morning, the washing machine spinning and the kids all singing words by heart. Can you li...
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moreThe problem of evil? The Greater Problem of Good?
On Monday, August 08 th, 2011So after dinner, she picks coneflowers in the garden. Cradles the long stems in her apron skirt, carries them up through the picket gate. And she turns to me on the top step of the porch, holds her apron out to me, all those purple petals — art in an apron. “Why is there all this loveliness?” She wants to know. I almos...
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morewhen food’s a hallowed thing
On Friday, July 29 th, 2011Weeds keep coming up and we can’t keep up. But July, all carefree, just shrugs its shoulders and the zucchinis bloom happily anyways into these steaming plates, lettuce frilling the edge of sultry days. So I take that basket brought back from Africa, the one with the name of the woman who wove it, written right there on the tag in her own hand — I take that basket t...
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morewhen you’re praying to live more like Jesus
On Wednesday, June 15 th, 2011When I first read her story on the screen, I want to drive a for sale sign into the front lawn and sell all the pigs. Mainly because I don’t think I can shoe horn a few hundred hogs into a suitcase — and there’s now way around it: my heart’s already left on a jet plane for Africa. Because here I am with the clean and the climbing in North Ameri...
