trust
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moreWhen You Desperately Want God to Hear Your Prayers
On Wednesday, November 02 nd, 2011When we buy her two pygmy goats for her birthday, who knew how big faith could get? We bring them home in June in a mini-van with no air-conditioning. Two miniature goats neighing back and forth — on the laps of two boys making jokes about something warm running down their legs. “We do need to name them,” the birthday girl announces. She strokes on...
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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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morewhen things get broken
On Tuesday, September 20 th, 2011The morning’s barely warm, early and breaking. On the way in from the hen house, she trips on the back step and drops the only egg she’s found. How do you tell someone that there are times it’s best to leave some of the pieces of your life behind? That sometimes leaving pieces of the shell behind just might release you. You never break apart — you break ...
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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 ...
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moreSo all is grace?
On Tuesday, August 23 rd, 2011So Shaun Groves drove up the gravel lane here last night. We heaped mashed potatoes and roasted herbed ham and fresh sweet corn from the garden onto his plate. The Farmer made him ice cream. And the boys wore him down with jokes and dares to slip down their little backyard zipline and after we all laughed too hard and then held hands and prayed, we sent him to bed with promi...
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moreHope
On Tuesday, August 09 th, 2011Walking east of the barn in the silence, through the field and the straw left behind after the thrashed wheat, it was right there, in the soil there under the feet — in each stalk lying … waiting — that the earth knows nothing wasted, that all that falls, turns, this long moist breath of ruin and rot, but a warm whisper of renewal of next y...
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morehow to be outstanding in your field
On Tuesday, July 12 th, 2011Knee high by the first of July is what they say. That’s how high the corn needs to be in this neck of the woods by that day on the calendar, if we are going to make crop before fall and first frost. When we walk the fields in early evening, he says it too, how he had wondered if we’d make it this year. ...
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morewhat’s needed when embarking on motherhood
On Tuesday, July 05 th, 2011The train moves slow. The children, all six, dangle happy out windows. I fumble for our tickets. Look for answers I can’t find. The train lurches and I reach for a seat and a boy grins at me trying to hold on. When did all their limbs become long? When did I turn and miss that all the days are the destination? ...
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moreWhat to Sing in Your Storms
On Tuesday, June 21 st, 2011‘If God really works in everything — then why don’t we thank Him for everything?” She asks me this straight out. My daughter, Hope, and I, we sit in the truck on the field’s hem, waiting to give the Farmer his lunch. The Farmer’s planting bean seeds into earth’s dark bed. The sky’s rising darker in the west. He races rain. “For ev...
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moreWhat Matters Most on the Messy Days
On Tuesday, June 07 th, 2011Even if there’s a ring of yesterday’s dirt still in the tub and more math lessons waiting to finish in June. If regrets hound hard and doubts circle around, around, scavengers picking at hopes… If the to-do list is longer than the Mississippi and there isn’t enough ink to check it all off and if just right now… just as right now wondrously is &#...
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moreweekends are for a light fragrance
On Saturday, May 14 th, 2011‘The breaking of the alabaster box and the anointing of the Lord filled the house with the odor, with the sweetest odor. Everyone could smell it. Whenever you meet someone who has… gone through things for the Lord, willing to be imprisoned by the Lord, just being satisfied with Him and nothing else, immediately you scent the fragrance...
