Good morning... We wake on the day that Scott's body will be laid to rest. As his obituary so beautifully reveals, he loved so very well. His amazing wife, his two young kids, his extended family, his many friends, his church, his work, Scott loved so very, very well. Basking in the sunshine streaming into our church, I [...]
Good morning... As I wake in the dark of this night, I notice three unique things. The heat has kicked on, as temperatures drop. The wind chimes are going wild, as the breeze picks up. And my mind is flooded with prayers for my friend, as she prepares to lay her husband to final rest today. Then I [...]
Good morning... As my mind quietly shifts from asleep to awake, I take one huge breath and immediately think of my friend Anne. Today the Landers' family will reverently lay Jerry's body to final rest, but, joy of joys, Jerry's robust spirit has already returned to our God, carried in the arms of his best friend Jesus. I [...]
Good morning... "Almighty God, please catch and keep each suffering soul swept up in the current of this wounding world," begs my newest prayer card. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You [alone] have the words of eternal life [you are our only hope]" (John 6:68, AMP). "Almighty God, please catch and keep each suffering soul." We each [...]
Good morning... Gathering around the kitchen island as one dear friend prepared a birthday dinner for another dear friend, we were discussing how important Jerry and Anne Landers have been to our church family, for years and years and years. Teaching Sunday school. Leading Bible studies. Facilitating worship experiences. Instigating healing prayer. Volunteering on committee after committee. Sharing [...]
Good morning... While nursing a partial tear in her ACL, our dog Tate chased after a squirrel, yelped really loud, fell to the ground, laid down for a long while, lame. That night we let Tate sleep outside for potty purposes. In solidarity, in case she needed help, I slept under a blanket on our outdoor couch beneath [...]
Good morning... I pulled the three stapled pages from my mailbox at church and read his kind note. "I wanted to share this poem by Billy Collins in case you haven't read it before. Collins wrote it in 2002 to commemorate the one-year anniversary of 9/11/01. I think it captures the heartbreak of the senseless taking of hundreds [...]
Good morning... On September 3rd, as we celebrated the new life born from the wedded union of our oldest son and his wife, one of Kyler's Lovett School classmates died of cancer. In my memory, Pearce Howell and his twin sister Laura were gently kindhearted and quite talented athletically. He played baseball; she played soccer. The twins would [...]
Good morning... She also loved the same profound sentence from yesterday's post, The Mathematics of Love. "Your love has a math that compounds according to the mystical science of the cross." Opening wide the blessing, she read aloud to me a poem about God's compounding love. Now it's our turn to embody these words, to read slowly and [...]
Good morning... I think back on a phone conversation I had with a friend this week, a friend stuck in a dark place. She read aloud to me a poignant quote from the book Let God: Spiritual Conversations with Francois Felenon by Winn Collier. "We shouldn't give much energy toward trying to see precisely how God is working [...]
