fear
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morewhen you are looking for His steadying hand
On Thursday, March 29 th, 2012That is what came at the end. At the end of the day, aft...
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moreBest Advice for Hard Times
On Friday, February 10 th, 2012It’s what I sang over dishes. Sang on the days when I felt too weary to take another step, clean up another mess, change another diaper. It’s what I sing when the enemy attacks with lies, when I feel alone and scared, when I fear the future and whispers in the shadows. It’s what my mother-in-law, a Dutch farmer’s wife and mother of nine...
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moreWhat a Parent Wants to Say Before a Child Leaves
On Thursday, January 26 th, 2012Dear Son — who is called to climb a thousand walls, You have to know how your unfolding from me was a miracle. That’s the miraculous thing about miracles – they really do happen. How is it in this crazy, holy world does a girl-woman bear a boy-child? How does she raise a squalling boy-child into a man? I’ve never been one of those. And this the...
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moreThe 1 Habit More Important than Quiet Time? {Memorize the Mount: Free Sermon on the Mount Memory Booklet}
On Wednesday, January 25 th, 2012Who memorizes God in the age of Google? For a week, longer, I wake with these fears choking hard. Fears pushing me into the pit. And it comes while I struggle to get out of bed, comes early as the light pries back the dark, words we’ve been committing to heart — and I murmur them, hold onto them like a lifeline tossed: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for thei...
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moreWhat’s the Answer to Anxiety?
On Monday, January 16 th, 2012There are birds at the feeders, chickadees. They flit nervous. I watch the light in the trees, the way it falls across the walls. Across the calendar and to-do lists and I try to remember to breathe. John Calvin and I remember the year we were four. The year I was four, my sister was crushed under the wheels of a truck in our driveway. That’s my first memory, the day Aimee wa...
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moreThe 1 Habit Your New Year Can’t Do Without: {Giveaway}
On Thursday, January 05 th, 2012‘Anail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit.” ~ Erasmus It’s only the 4th day of the New Year, when this woman cups my face in her hands and draws me right close to just say it. “It’s changed my life.” I’ve been trying to shake it for days, as I set the table, read with the kids, watch the snow come down — shake...
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5 Steps to Making New Year’s Resolutions
On Saturday, December 31 st, 2011The New Year wears hope like a fragrance. I watch a new day of the first month of a brand new year come, breaking up over the horizon, up through hopelessness, there on the rim of our fields and the scent, fresh, carries in on the wind… carries me. Unspoiled winter stretches across our fields — like an unfurled year awaiting new ways of walking. How to trek out acro...
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morewhen it’s all pressing in : the fluid principle
On Wednesday, October 19 th, 2011I‘m standing at the counter, day seeping in without knocking, jotting down a list of the day’s tasks, the work of a week, in my journal, and it’s just a tad overwhelming. I’m trying to remember just to breathe… And then I am fifteen again. That summer I gripped the handlebars of a Honda Goldwing, weave around margarine tubs set up as pylons in the ...
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moreThe Very Best Place to Really Hope
On Wednesday, September 28 th, 2011The boys paddle through the waters, one strong stroke at a time, and I watch their wake. The way they keep moving ahead, just keep moving ahead. It could be this way: that I cease seeking to escape pilgrim life, that I embrace the journey, that I not want any different road for my life than the road He winnows. It’s wh...
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morewhen longing to choose joy
On Monday, September 19 th, 2011The ring Sara sent me in June, it didn’t fit on my middle finger. Sara had wore it on her middle finger — until the ring’s sterling silver weight had made her enflamed knuckles burn. That’s when she wound it off slow, slipped in an envelope and had her grocery lady drop it off at the post office. Sara knew. The fire in my bones had been about extinguished. If I wore...
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morefor the hard and windy days
On Wednesday, September 14 th, 2011The seasons are changing — it’s there on the wind. We find socks again. We clean out the flowerbeds, plow up more of the garden, tend to the trellis with all its last blooms. Beauty, it can be a strange flower, unfurling in the hard seasons — most fragrant in the wind. I wonder at that too — In the pruning of the branches, the vinedresser is closest, bre...
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morewhen you need peace …
On Tuesday, September 06 th, 2011So ends come, and beginnings too. They always come together those two —like friends trusting each other. The summer that was, it ends, slips behind us, and we’ll all spin a bit further around the sun and how do I know if I’ve followed you out on enough limbs yet? I love how you grin and lean. I think I’d like a few more bare foot days ...
