Archive for October 2012
Splashes of Joy and Strength
Sun pours in through the windows. Grainy video footage of the sixties movements march across our TV screen. My teens sprawl long-legged across the living room floor, munching lunch in history class. In the back yard outside, white rags of surrender blow from my wire raspberry fences. A green dinosaur scrambles up on my lap,…
Read MoreSugar Cubes, Graveyards, and Secret Smiles (How to feel close in prayer?)
It was the kitchen that we snuck into to munch sugar cubes and stir up clandestine kool aid as church teens during my family’s ultra-health food phase. Surrounded by gravestones, a line of towering fir trees, and the best green apple tree you ever climbed up into with a book, the tiny blue and white…
Read MoreStrong Hands & Wrestling Matches
I scrawl across torn notebook paper that I found in a camp cupboard. Five hundred teens and youth leaders race across a wooded campground, and I pause my conversations, my camp games, and my zip-lining to meet with God. He’s been calling me, and I needed to face the hard questions. Grabbing my ninth or…
Read MoreA Mediterranean Brush Off
Apricot bits pair with creamy yellow couscous pearls, tumbling off Daniel’s spoon and speckling his chin. Mediterranean food rains down on his wooden chair and the linoleum floor below. “As soon as you’re done, we’ll play outside,” Morgan urges. “Mom, I done!” he asserts. “No, eat a few more bites,” I tell him. He bounces…
Read MoreConspiring Teens Plot Joy (Want their Secret?)
The teens exchanged glances, eyes flaring, shoulders keeping time with the rising drums. “Ready?” was the unspoken question, as grins split open further to sing, “You are hooooooooly.” Spiked blonde hair rose above a striped teal and brown shirt, and shorter brown-haired male in tan sang out with abandon, in a line of young men…
Read MoreTacos, Rescues, and Lovers
We pass the white plastic coffee carafe around the room, twelve women with Bibles splayed out, pens raised. During the video presentation, we fill in blanks, scribble notes, and sip from styrofoam cups. When the lights are flipped on again, we laugh, ask questions, and discuss the material from our week’s study. This room that…
Read MoreFriendships, Flourescent Lights and Free-Throw Lines (Guestposting at Breakfast in Moscow)
Atop creaky honey-colored bleachers in middle school, Sara Hepner* crushed a wad of chewing gum onto my hair, smushing it far into the strands. The basketball game of high school boys raged on below us, and foul horns bellowed. Lanky high school boys lined up at the free-throw line, and my fingers crawled behind my…
Read More“The Sky is Low…”
“The sky is low, the clouds are mean, A traveling flake of snow Across a barn or through a rut Debates if it will go. A narrow wind complains all day How some one treated him; Nature, like us, is sometimes caught Without her diadem.” (Emily Dickinson) Laying low this weekend after a great youth…
Read MoreDentist Trips and How to Love Parenting
The chimes blow hard, and yellow leaves carpet my lawn, the gaps in the naked trees revealing more of my neighbors’ yards than I have seen yet. This uncharted territory of autumn in a new house makes everything fresh this year. At the dentist office this morning, four Dougans crowd into the elevator, pass under…
Read More“Plotting Murder?”
Dark dirt mounds litter my yard, evidence of a mole or gopher infestation. Mini mountains crest my lawn like volcanic islands being born. My landscaping beds, garden flowers, and plants have been frequent summer snacks for the rodent population. In a fit of murderous critter-rage last night, I spotted two entry tunnels – a rare…
Read More