Good morning... "Now with the Awake To Wholeness retreat behind us, might we celebrate your birthday season?" I texted a friend. (As I reflect, I realize that "behind" is the wrong word. It is more accurate to say, "Now with the retreat inside us, might we celebrate?") "And . . . I thoroughly enjoyed retelling the Saturday experience [...]
Good morning... Yesterday, I muted Gameday football to watch the funeral of a thirteen year old girl who died last week in a small engine plane crash at a nearby airport. Afterward, I sat in bed and quietly wept. How did each of her parents speak of their only child with such soulful eloquence? How did her pastor [...]
Good morning... "Thank you, Sue," he emailed me yesterday. "We all struggle with the fact that we have a deep and abiding love for others, even though we know with certainty that some will outrun us to the Father’s house. In a way, it is comforting to know that people have struggled with this reality for centuries. I [...]
Good morning... Steve, my husband, heads up the chaplain team at The Lovett School, the school where two fathers of Lower School students died this week. I had just finished a long phone conversation with a close friend of one of the grieving wives when Steve pulled in the driveway that tragic day. "So did you hear?" Of [...]
Good morning... Yesterday I woke in deep prayer for the families and friends of the two young fathers from our community who died in a horrific helicopter crash. As I waited for our microwave to heat up some day-old coffee, words from a hymn repeated often in our childhood church strangely sang up through the sorrow in my [...]
Good morning... As we wake on the twentieth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, admire with me the touching story of one young man who helped to save as many as twelve people with the final moments of his life. This is how we have discovered love’s reality: Jesus sacrificed his life for us. Because of this great [...]
Good morning... I wake on the morning of Bill's memorial service, praying over the words gracing his obituary, lifting up into the LORD's healing light his dear wife and their two unique kids, his extended family and his many, many friends. Next Monday Bill would have been sixty-two years old, had his life not ended suddenly on September [...]
Good morning... "Hi Sue," she wrote the day after Betty Skinner died. "Sending you a quick email. I am always amazed how the Upper Room seems to fit those moments in my life . . . connecting to mutterings and thoughts. Please see below. With the passing of Betty . . . and the prayer for spiritual mentors [...]
Good morning... "I came home from the beautiful memorial service," I wrote in my journal, "exhausted from listening, exhausted from crying, exhausted from socializing. But as I sit still with myself right now, I realize that the most exhausting thing for me is knowing that these could be our grieving children. With their three kids born in the [...]
Good morning... "This is not God's will," the minister said at the celebration of Eliza's vivacious, twenty-eight year old life. "This is outside the will of God, but not outside the love of God," he tried to explain the deep mystery of grief. But I had just written in our blog post, "I entrust Eliza’s life to God’s [...]
