Good morning... "If you don't sit down, share a cup of coffee and talk with people," said Jane Goodall in her documentary The Hope, "can you ever expect them to change? It's no good arguing. You have got to reach their heart." The beauty is when we reach their heart, our own heart is also changed. Heart to [...]
Good morning... Cuddling into our couch with my first cup of coffee, I pull out the notes I jotted yesterday on the paper ticket ushering me home to Atlanta, Georgia from my parents' place near Cleveland, Ohio. Coming back from my mom's 84th birthday and my parent's 62nd anniversary celebration, I watched a fascinating documentary on the short [...]
Good morning... Today is my parents' 62nd wedding anniversary. After dinner at the dining hall last night, I snapped this picture of them as couple #28, front and center, in the wedding photo contest currently being held at their senior living community. When the photo was taken, my mom was twenty-two and my dad was twenty-three, college sweethearts [...]
Good morning... After a full night's sleep, I wake in the guest room of my parent's villa in the Renaissance senior living community near my hometown of Berea, Ohio. The walls here are filled with pictures our of our extended family growing up over the years. Two of my favorite photo collages live in this room, a frame [...]
Good morning... As I wake early to travel to Ohio for a visit with my parents for my mom's birthday, I think of the Anne Lamont quote: “I am all the ages I've ever been.” Turning 84 years old today, my mom is all the ages she have ever been. She is a living bundle of memories from [...]
"Good morning," she texted after yesterday's post When We Are Weak And Weary, a post highlighting the soulful symphony of birds and the positive benefits of regularly taking at least seventeen seconds to focus on something soothing, something beautiful, something life-giving. "We are on the same wavelength," my friend wrote, "I recorded this cell phone video on Saturday! [...]
Good morning... Even with all of the doors to our home closed and locked tight, I heard the birds bickering boldly in the middle of the night. Loud. Relentless. These unseen creatures were having a heated discussion. "If I open the door, trying to catch a glimpse, I might scare them away," I thought to myself, so I [...]
Good morning... Like many once-in-a-lifetime events, the 21st birthday of our youngest child was kinda underwhelming for me. Years ago, during a particularly challenging summer with our son, I found the hand painted old fashion sign above: "Good Beer. Good Cheer. Always on tap here." I purchased it at Goodwill as a symbol of hope that our family [...]
Good morning... After seventeen years of dating and fifteen years of living together, yesterday was the incredibly special night our neighbors wed. We enjoy living across the street from Joe and JoAnn. She and I particularly share a similar zest for life, and we love giving random gifts to one another as the Spirit moves. Earlier in the [...]
Good morning... Sustained by our prayers through March, April, and May, my mom miraculously opened her eyes in the ICU and came back to life at the sound of my father's voice. Recovering from a surgery to repair her broken femur following a fall in early March, my mom's health had nosedived quickly. Within 24 hours, she had [...]
