Remember the plane falling from the sky and everybody screaming? It’s about to crash into the middle of a crowded baseball stadium, until Superman gets underneath, catches it by the nose, and sets it down gently. Then he opens the door and steps inside, checking to make sure the passengers are safe. Are you okay?…
It came in the mail yesterday, what I have been mistakenly calling my “mother-in-law” dress. Someone said to me, I think you mean the mother-of-the-bride dress. Okay, that too. I asked my mom on the phone last night, So, is it bad that I can only zip it if I exhale all oxygen from my…
I went to the closet door and reached for a book, only to find myself flat on my back, wind knocked out of me, on the hard-packed dirt of the crawlspace. Mom was in a panic, and dad was furious at himself for leaving the crawlspace hatch open. You don’t think about the floor until…
It is the lead apron the dental hygienist puts on me before she takes x-rays of my teeth. Heavy, this grief I wear now. I feel the weight of it every morning when I wake up and try to get out of bed –sadness at the loss of my dad and over all the veins…
I say it to my coffee in the morning, Do something. A small idolatry –hoping to get all strength for living out of 12 ounces of caffeine. God says to his people, “Bring in your idols.” And he demands of these idols, these 12 ounces of god, “Do something.” (Isaiah 41:22, 23 NIV) Except idols don’t…
Gifts poured in during the week of my dad’s funeral –expensive flower arrangements; cards with cash; and enough food that we had to create an overflow table in the garage. But one of my favorites was the package of toilet paper. Some ladies put in their dollars and went together on that paper product, and…
The nice Costco man looked at me and said, Those 8-foot kayak boxes aren’t going to fit in this 4-foot truck bed. But I had already paid for the kayaks, and they don’t hold things for you at Costco. He kindly told me that they would hold onto them if I could come back with…
I hadn’t showered or brushed my teeth, and the kitchen was an explosion of Caleb’s culinary arts project from the night before, so I sat down and watched a two-hour documentary this morning with my husband. (Do you see the reasoning that went on there?) The cameras followed over a dozen men and one woman,…
I whispered close in my dear friend’s ear last night, Have you felt the baby move yet? Yes, she said. I’m pretty sure. Since my baby’s feet are now longer than his body length was at birth, I’m experiencing new joy in following the pregnancy of not one but three expectant mothers at church. It’s…
In high school I worked really hard to do pretty well. My report card (back in the days when it was actually a card someone wrote on with a pen) had a few A’s, always some B’s, and an occasional C in math or science or both. But I hung out with the smart kids….
I went to my calculator, and it figures to be over a thousand dollars –the total amount of money my dad had paid my kids when they got A’s. $20 for straight A’s, and they had to be perfectly straight, or $1 for every A. My daughter graduated summa cum laude a few years ago,…
About a half an hour from my mom’s house I thought I was going to be ill. Stomach knotted, I wondered how I could walk my own grief to the front door and face the mirrored grief of my mother. The next several days presented some of the most difficult challenges I have ever faced….
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