Good morning... The complex matrix of needs in the life of children today are supported in tangible ways through the teachers within our classrooms. Teaching is often a thankless job, like changing diapers, preparing daily meals, and cleaning endless piles of dirty clothes. School is a second home for many and teachers are passionate pseudo parents to the [...]
Good morning... Yesterday's post continued to bleed into my day. Our final words became my constant prayer. "Lord, please heighten our sensitiveness to you. May we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell your magic all around us." Right away a loyal reader from Florida wrote. "Good morning Sue," she texted. "I have always stopped daily to notice something [...]
Good morning... "God is present with me this day," I read aloud one of my favorite Howard Thurman passages found in Meditations of the Heart. "God is present with me in the midst of my anxieties. . . . Little by little, I am beginning to understand that deliverance from anxiety means a fundamental growth in spiritual character [...]
Good morning... "God is protecting you in the midst of his presence," says the tender image above, an image I reworked into yesterday's post. Then I received a text from a friend who is going through a very challenging time. We planned a spontaneous walk and talk to the nearby horse farm, meeting up at the stop sign [...]
Good morning... On her way to our spiritual direction session in our basement, she ran into traffic on a drizzly Monday morning. "I had to calm down my racing mind," she said. "Sue will not care if I arrive a bit late. I needed to breathe myself down from my head to my heart." A red light happened [...]
Good morning... On different devices, our immediate family Zoomed with my mom and dad in Ohio as part of our Easter celebration. We had a real scare with my 83-year-old mother's health this past month - a broken femur following a fall, a small stroke, a life-threatening infection, organs shutting down, on a ventilator in the ICU. Yet [...]
Good morning... It is sometimes hard to notice God's invisible ways. This morning I caught God undeniably at work. As most of you know, I get up in the middle of the night to write our blog posts whenever God stirs me awake. After getting out of bed and enjoying a few hours of prayerful pondering, I craft [...]
Good morning... Walking our dog past a neighborhood nearby, I snapped the photo above on Friday morning. Bursting with color. Boasting with joyful variety. Blooming with the fabulous fragrance of spring. My whole weekend mirrored the image above, colorful, joyful, fabulously fragrant. A few friends, one new and one old, hopped into my car for a ride to [...]
Good morning... A longtime friend has also had a loved one fighting for life in the ICU this month. We have been exchanging private prayers and texting one another updates most every day. She wrote me an email after this week's blog post My Mom's Bumpy Ride Home, a post which ended with a music video of Willie [...]
Good morning... There are many, many of layers of me. Wife. Mother. Attentive listener. Writer. Teacher. Lifelong learner. Daughter. Middle sister. Midwestern roots. Trusted friend. Dog mama. Lover of the sun, the sea, the sky. Avid prayer-er. Spiritual director. Middle of the night blogger. "Spirit of the living God, please move through the many layers [...]
