Good morning... Yesterday morning I blogged about A Dog And My Dad. Then in the afternoon, I opened the brown cardboard package that arrived on our doorstep. A loving book, pictured above, greeted me with aging-dog eyes. Awww. A golden retriever, so much like our deeply-missed Tate. No card. Kind gift. No name. God, who is this from? [...]
Good morning... I have a story to tell you about a dog, my dad, and the timing of God. After the loss of our beloved dog Tate in June, we have been working for the past six weeks to find the next golden retriever puppy for our family. With the help of our dog-loving friend, we located our [...]
Good morning... Most every day, I walk the sidewalk pictured above. One day, no leaves. The next day, a ton. What a silent, visual truth: The neighborhood trees, just like you and me, are altered by the rainstorms of life. As I have been trying to "obey my muddle clear" this week, I enjoyed lunch with an old, [...]
Good morning... Adorned with a new, nearly naked haircut, our little dog Gracie and I drove to her annual vet visit in the pouring rain. The completely drenching experience reminded me of a writing my friend recently shared. ****** The Call of Rain by Matthew Kelly in Reflections of a Trappist Hermit, pp. 117-119 ...Water is always an [...]
Good morning... Fall begins to form slowly, like the rising of the sun. A commitment here. An activity there. The calendar starts to fill. On Sunday morning at Northside Church, I spoke in all three of our worship services, inviting women of all ages and stages to explore our friendly schedule of fall offerings. My notes from that [...]
Good morning... Last week, I heard myself tell a friend, "I just feel kinda muddled." Complex. Confused. Snarled. Struggling. Dazed. Discombobulated. Muddled is not a word I use very often. "Sounds like you are sorta betwixt and between," my loving friend replied. Finding myself in a foggy funk, I prayerfully dumped out the separate items cluttering my inner [...]
Good morning... Last Saturday, the end of a cherished era came to a quiet end. My husband and I were planning to spend the night at Red Top Mountain in our beloved pop-up camper, but the night before he said, "Suz, we are 62 years old, I wonder if we have reached the end of our camping days." [...]
Good morning... I snapped a photo of these handwritten words from inside my friend's birthday card. "God will take you where you haven't intended to go in order to produce in you what you could not achieve on your own. It's uncomfortable, but it's GRACE." Then, she read to us wisdom from a devotional book she loves. ***** [...]
Good morning... "I grew up with a mom who often overreacted," said my friend, as we talked to and from the horse farm. "She would blow up over the littlest thing." Now my friend finds herself wrestling with the same impulsive tendency. "I'm trying to learn to PAUSE more," she explained, "like the Bible verse about being quick [...]
Good morning... As we near 2:00 am, I take outside our little dog Gracie and stand barefoot in the wet, cool grass. As I look up, thick clouds surround the waning moon. Stretched wide and thin, the white vapors open space, a breathing room for blue. Blue. Cloudy. Stretched wide and thin. These descriptors animate the text string [...]
