I watched last year’s Red River Rivalry from my dad’s San Antonio hospital room. It was his second weeklong hospitalization in a couple of years due to fluid buildup in his lungs. My husband and oldest son were also there, and like the fans at the Cotton bowl, just on a much smaller scale, we… Read More Losing My Dad: A Pill and a Pillar
Wedding silver decades wornScattered in church kitchensThrown away by kids unknownLife in beautiful trenchesSunday lunchesEaster brunchesBirthday bunchesHospitality honed and sownDown four forks, five spoonsknives all here but onesalad pitchforks holding tooWedding set undoneBreakfast scramblesDinner ramblesDessert bramblesFamily looms and bloomsSame pattern from my memoryThe brand was Reed & BartonConfident in my scrutinyI ordered six new cartonsMassachusetts… Read More A Slightly Different Pattern
Sheets for veils”Here Comes the Bride”Ignition offFor downhill ridesSaving pennies70’s styleBirth year quarters In grandchild pilesFlea markets Solo ServeRestaurant waitressOn her last nerveBack porch smokingHorned rimsVegas or LondonOn a whimThin sliced breadPepperidge FarmHam and cheeseToaster-oven warmedPolyester pantsTurquoise ringBarbie clothesOn her sewing machineCheer bloomers, tooGingham checkedRoyal blue taffetaHomecoming dressHot tea, two bagsCarnation creamWhipped butter spreadToast in… Read More Gigi
Today is our 31st wedding anniversary, but these things I wrote six years ago still ring true today – maybe even more so. Today is our 25th wedding anniversary. 25 years! I remember thinking ten years was a big accomplishment. Justin Taylor posted a G. K. Chesterton quote on Twitter last week. It made me… Read More 25 Years of Incompatibility
Gifting and Passion Mission Opportunity God’s Providence That was the framework offered to us by a local Austin pastor as we tried to figure out what to do next. I didn’t fully realize the chaos and confusion of my own heart and mind until he provided this categorical way for us to discern the best… Read More Faithful Frameworks
Robert and I are somewhere in southeast Texas right now, a middle-of-nowhere sort of place equidistant from Austin, San Antonio, and Houston. It’s really beautiful here. Not the majestic-fall-foliage beauty of New England that we’ve grown so accustomed to, but the back-road, brushy, barbed-wire beauty that is still very familiar to us. We walked a… Read More The Gift of Home
Sitting around a cafe table in our local Barnes & Noble, we were drinking coffee and talking about life and motherhood. The conversation was upbeat and there was laughter. Some of the laughter probably served only to keep the tears from falling, but I guess that’s not the worst defense mechanism. These were not only… Read More Missional Motherhood: Grace
One of my favorite Old Testament stories is about a woman without a name. Interestingly, she is the woman about whom we have the most biographical information of any other woman in Scripture. We only know her, though, by the name of the town where she lived, Shunem. You may remember the Shunammite woman as… Read More 6 Lessons From A Nameless Woman
Last January, just after a Sunday morning worship service, I stopped by Trader Joe’s to buy a special dessert for a gathering of college students we planned to take them on an international mission trip last summer. It was a signature dessert from the very country we’d be traveling to, and I was excited to… Read More Wisdom Toward Outsiders
My favorite Christmas movie is Elf. It might just be my favorite movie period, the only one I can watch over and over. Something about Buddy’s “affinity for elf culture” though he is a human as well as his innocent unawareness of the fact that he sticks out like…well, like a grown man in an… Read More Buddy the Elf & The Incarnation of Christ