and all shall be well

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us, even in the leafless winter, even in the ashy city. I am thinking now of grief, and of getting past it; I feel my boots trying to leave the ground, I feel my heart pumping hard. I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I…

Read More

The New Kids

The conference ends with the new kids. Timmy, Luci and I have been at the conference this week for Avant Ministries, a mission agency dedicated to planting churches internationally. Though still very much members of TeachBeyond ourselves, committed to sharing Christ in educational settings, we’ve been asked to host the youth program at the Avant…

Read More

Grateful Goodbyes

Here are the hard goodbyes Love you ’til the day I die Here’s where regrets all fade Into the light from which you’re made And here is the warm sand Sifting through your perfect hand Here’s where you laugh again In the memory of a friend And here’s where you find the truth It’s the…

Read More

Baby Goals

“She just wants to be a bigger baby.” We say it a lot these days. My daughter wistfully watches me make dinner in the kitchen from her spot in the living room, and I can almost see her plotting a route to me. I’ll stand up, then walk around the corner and stand there with Mom, she’s thinking….

Read More

All Here

What I Expect of You: 2. You’ll be Present. Come to class on time every day.       When you are here, be fully present with your body, mind and soul. Some of you know one another very well, but your social life belongs in the hall. In here, you are scholars, readers and…

Read More

Homecoming

It’s only after we’ve been on the beach for a while, watching her little toes rake through the gravel, that I realize Luci has never felt the ground with her bare feet. I can count on one hand the times that my snow-born baby has been outside without a coat on, and she has never been…

Read More

A Summit Day

She decided to wear three dresses. One day my sister, Holly, came up to the chalet in the mountains and we pulled out “every wedding dress in the house.” There were, surprisingly, four, belonging to myself, my great aunt, my grandmother and my mother. She’d also brought two she’d ordered online for comparison, a grand…

Read More

Hello Again

September 1998. In the grey minutes between picking up my schedule in the gym and the digital bell that began my first day of high school, I wound my way to the musty, forgotten corner of the campus that housed the music room. It was empty, as I’d suspected it would be, since there were…

Read More

House Hunters: Kandern

  House Hunters International makes me dangerously smug. The House Hunters franchise, as far as I can tell, forms a cornerstone of the Home Garden Television mansion. The basic formula involves someone–usually a couple–looking for a house, then being carted around to three different houses by a realtor. At the end, the couple has to reach some…

Read More

Yours Also Is the Night

Yours is the day, yours also the night;     you have established the heavenly lights and the sun. Psalm 74:16 “I am one acquainted with the night,” writes Robert Frost. I know this poem–its images wet and grim, its refrain mournful and lonely–well enough to teach it, well enough for the few questions that appear on…

Read More