Gaining a heart of wisdom
In just a few days, we'll begin the season of Advent. Even if you don't observe much else on the liturgical calendar, it's hard to avoid the on-ramp to Christmas. Instead of counting shopping days and check marks on my do-list, my practice has been to think of Advent as a time of preparation for… Continue reading Musings: November 2018
I never leave the house without a book . . . BUT one busy Wednesday when an unexpected medical appointment pushed an already derailed schedule even further off track, I jumped into the driver's seat of our car, headed down the bumpy hill of our driveway, and only then realized the horrible truth. In my… Continue reading Reading as a Way of Life
Twenty years ago, my husband and I made one of the most difficult decisions of our married life: we decided to leave a church and to worship elsewhere. Leaving behind dear people we loved (and likely offending more than one person in the process), we left that fellowship convinced that God was telling us it… Continue reading The Hard Work of Hanging On and the Brave Work of Letting Go
The distance around my elliptical driveway is one tenth of a mile. I know this because I drove around it, watching the odometer—and then did it again just to be sure. This fall I’ve been doing a careful jog-trot around its leaf-strewn gravel, a compromise intended to jump start a flagging metabolism without putting undue… Continue reading Gratitude Is a Gift for All Seasons
One morning, deep into the throes of our kitchen renovation, it dawned on me that I had no idea where our toaster was. Having reduced breakfast to the lowest common denominator of toasted bagels with cream cheese, my quest for the toaster was more than idle curiosity, and when it showed up in the furnace… Continue reading Following the Instructions for a Grateful Heart
By faith, we have gone behind the curtain. We have made our voices heard, according to the temperature of our hearts — Some with a raised fist; Some with a wavering hope. We have sifted the relative merits of deeply flawed and difficult candidates. We have heard the word “Never” said about winners and losers,… Continue reading A Post-Election Prayer
Conversations about the laws that govern chemistry might be one of the most spiritual things going on this week at my dining room table. Homeschooling chemistry involves revisiting the Periodic Table of Elements with its jagged line separating the metals and the non-metals and the tiny numbers that define and describe unseen properties of pure… Continue reading Beloved Differences Bring Us Together in Hope
Over time, a family with four sons develops a unique tone, a guy-culture with a certain decibel level and a distinct way of doing life. As a mother of some now-married sons, it has been a joy to welcome other women into this circle, women who love my sons well and have also opened their… Continue reading How to Be a “True Christian” Mother-in-Law
When Christmas seems to have been reduced to a shopping list; When the squares on your December calendar are bulging with enough activity to exhaust Frosty the Snowman, Santa, and all his elves; When you are tired of the knot that has already twisted itself into your stomach by the day after Thanksgiving . .… Continue reading Is It Time to Rethink Your Definition of Christmas?
When jets fly overhead, stitching up the airspace between Boston's Logan and somewhere-in-Europe, by the time they reach the sky over Mid-coast Maine they are barely visible, nothing but contrails. My roots are deep here on this country hill, thirty thousand feet below, so I'm no globetrotter, but over the years, visitors from around the… Continue reading Musings: October 2018
Living Our Days 