daughter

  • Theology of the Red Pants

    Whenever my mother took me clothes shopping as an adult, for my birthday or Christmas, she’d watch me head straight for the neutrals and slowly shake her head.  She lifted up the versions of the sweater or the jacket that I had picked, but these were red, purple, yellow, or green and she’d implore me to just…

  • Now

    Now

    Early in an authentic Christian walk, it’s all about relationship. A new knowledge and hope in the person of Jesus and the knowledge of how intimately and wholly we are known and loved fills our spirits with a light we never knew before. And so we want to tell everyone, and we do, spreading the…

  • Small

    Small

    I met and held the teeniest, tiniest, most perfect baby today. She was so impossibly light, both in luminescence and weight that it was hard to believe I was holding a real live person; she is so small. As a Mom of college kids, it’s easy to forget. My two babies were small once, just…

  • Face

    I have seen the Face of God. My eighteen-year old daughter was late to mass this Sunday and I was unaware. As a music minister at the front of the church, I didn’t see her sidle around the back corner and into the last pew. As it turns out, she, who had hoped to go…

  • Wrong

    Wrong

    There was something wrong with me but I didn’t know what it was. I was ten years old and sitting on my twin bed, trying to figure it out. For days, I had been burping far more than a tiny ten-year old should, and the smell that came out of my sixty-pound self was…foul. There’s…

  • Alma Mater

    There was a college student observing in one of my preschool music classrooms today, and as I watched her, dark-haired and nervous, I saw myself so many years before. I was once a freshman education major, sent into classrooms to see if it was an environment in which I wanted to work for the rest-of-my-life,…

  • Baby

    Baby

    Everyone’s been asking about how I’m doing with my last child leaving for college. “I’m fine,” I reply. “Surprisingly good, I am just so excited for her.” And it’s true, what a different experience this time around. I’m not gathering up baby pictures and memories. We are way behind on dorm shopping, and I’m okay…

  • Clock

    Clock

    As the school year winds down and the graduation ceremonies and parties gear up, you hear the same parental refrain: Make Time Stop. And I get it, I felt similar emotions when my oldest was graduating from high school. Then, I was gathering up moments from babyhood through elementary school and beyond and holding them…

  • Pass

    Pass

    My youngest child has just a handful of days left of high school, and I’m finding my reaction to her big milestone quite different from when we walked this road with our son just two years ago. Then, I was in mourning, pulling in every “last” and wringing my hands over how everything was about…

  • Oceans

    Oceans

    I am almost afraid to tell this story. It’s a story of promises fulfilled and prayers answered, but mostly it’s a story about the nature of life and the nature of God. Life is unpredictable; it bends and moves in twists and circles, yet, through it all, God is steadfast. Something I know now for…