faith

  • Living

      Yesterday, I was driving home and found my street the color of clay, flooded with a couple of inches of water, and police officers on the scene. It seemed there had been a water-main break, and it compromised both the road and the water source for the surrounding houses. In the hours that followed,…

  • 914 (part two)

      There are six or eight little white utility vans that zip around the university campus where I live, and I often see them while running, walking the dog or sitting on my porch. The vans are identical except for the drivers, whom I never notice, and their three digit license plate numbers, which I…

  • 914 (part one)

    I was done with signs. Done with trusting the intuition I felt God had given me from being in constant communication and relationship with him. Done with scanning my life, both exterior and interior, for leadings, messages, and hope. I felt cast off from my former status of much-loved-dear-daughter and it hurt. The saddest part…

  • panna cotta

    This year I’ve discovered a love of panna cotta. If it’s on a menu in a restaurant, I’m getting it, lemon or coffee or orange, delicate and wholesome at the same time. It’s so good, you would think it’s a hundred percent cream. (Oh, it is a hundred percent cream, you say? Pardon me while…

  • Strive

    Sometimes I make things happen and sometimes I let things happen. The good things, I mean. When I look back on opportunities I’ve had in life, I see that they’ve happened both ways, but mostly they’re a bit of a mix. When I started my preschool music teaching business, I didn’t necessarily know that’s what…

  • Mary

    As I meditate on the Passion of Jesus, my thoughts inevitably turn to Mary. Any of us who are mothers know the feeling of watching our children suffer. Sometimes we can help, kiss the boo boo, make everything better. Sometimes we can be a shoulder to cry on, and sometimes we can do nothing at…

  • Settled

    I was sitting on a bench trying to make out a song I heard coming from a truck across a parking lot. I was waiting on a message. As I walked the dog today, I asked God to open the door to my heart and come in for a while and speak. It had been…

  • Unsung

    Attending the funeral of someone who lived life well is like completing a masters-level course in an hour and a half. Lesson after lesson flies at you and you can’t quite catch each one, but you want to hold on to all of it if you can. I attended a funeral like this today for…

  • 11:04

    I know lots of people who see significant numbers everywhere they look….on clocks, receipts, in line at the grocery store. 11:11 is a common one, and when you happen to catch it, it’s supposed to be a little hello from someone you love who has died. My sister sees her birthday numbers, 3.16, as a…

  • Pineapple, orange soda, chicken salad

    I rounded the corner of the produce aisle, almost done with my hectic Christmas food shopping trip when I felt my mother. She was pointing me toward a display of whole pineapples and urging me to bring one to the family gathering on Christmas Day. I have learned to listen to that still, inner voice,…