Good morning... This Mother's Day week, I marvel at the way God is growing our youngest son. Finishing strong his junior year at the University of Georgia, Jeremiah has grown in some very significant ways. Initiative. Motivation. Expanding an idea outside the traditional box. After doing various odd jobs over the past several summers and removing Christmas trees [...]
Good morning... Thoroughly enjoying our final Monday class, we read aloud some of our favorite passages from The Other Side of Chaos by Margaret Silf. The fourteenth chapter is entitled Yesterday Is Already Ours. This enduring truth - yesterday is already ours - is embedded in us as we walk away from a transformative season together. Now let's [...]
Good morning... Over the past twenty-four hours, I have reminded myself repeatedly, "Be a reservoir." When I was tempted to talk too much . . . then decided to listen instead, "Be a reservoir." When I crafted a long confusing text . . . before deleting it, "Be a reservoir." When I felt sucked into the middle of [...]
Good morning... We meet monthly as a small group of spiritual directors, learning to listen keenly for the movement of God. Practicing a new-to-me way of focusing our attention, yesterday I said, "I would need to repeat this way of listening, regularly, by myself, processing my own experiences and gradually building up my inner resources, before I would [...]
Good morning... "This is last night at 9 pm," said the heading above the photo taken by my 'soul friend' from her front porch in Norway. The lingering patches of snow. The grounded boat dreaming of summer. The wrapped up car protected from harshness. The modest homes nestled beside the water. The mystical mountain range touched by a [...]
Good morning... When we were in Israel, we went to Yad Vashem - The World Holocaust Remembrance Center. Intense. Heartbreaking. A reminder of such excruciating pain and suffering. I took a photo of this quote from Benjamin Fondane, who was murdered at Auschwitz in 1944: "Remember only that I was innocent and, just like you, mortal on that [...]
Good morning... I have tried three times to write this Maundy-Thursday message. 1:30 - 3:30 am: My plethora of scattered thoughts just simply would not connect. I went back to bed. 7:00 to 9:00 am: After working diligently again, I touched one wrong random button. Away zapped all my hard, irretrievable work. Now it's 9:01 am: I give [...]
Good morning... "WOW, congrats!!!" she reached out after yesterday's blog post about our oldest son's engagement. Her email continued: "Driving into the factory this morning, I listened to Family Life Today and learned of a “new to me” book from 2015 - Seated with Christ: Living Freely in a Culture of Comparison by Heather Holleman. I really needed [...]
Good morning... I wake to remnants of our oldest son's engagement party. A homemade congratulations banner. A line-up of photos from their eight months of dating. A frig full of leftover food and beverages. Remnants of a wonderful whirlwind weekend. Just now, as I sat down to blog about our one-of-a-kind Saturday, at 1:40 am came a rustle [...]
Good morning... "I loved your Stop Trying post," a longtime friend wrote yesterday. "The image of hands caught my attention." "On our recent trip to New York, we went to the Guggenheim," she explained. "There was an exhibit for Black History Month that was quite moving, about slave ships coming to America. I keep returning to the close [...]
