Where You Can Find Steadiness for All Your Madness

Like a gift you didn't expect, like a smile from a grumpy grandboy after a nap, like a taste of chocolate in trail mix. When it comes to March, each fair day feels like this. I love the drama of March weather–sometimes winter, sometimes spring. It can be wild rain and wind, tornadoes and school…

The Wake Up Call that Frightened and Delighted

I’m awake and up before The Cowboy has gone to bed. It’s 1:21 a.m. and too darn early. I went to bed at 10, but I’m wide awake now. I’m afraid I’m getting weird. Unbalanced. And while I really love getting a jump on my day, I’m also afraid I’m getting pulled out of sync…

Holy Hangout

“The Lord reigns,” I read in psalm 99 this morning. It’s not my schedule or my son or my sins that reign. It’s not the calls I need to return or Covid-19 or conservatives and democratsor cronies at the gym. I could fill up the page with all the causes and concerns that do not…

Why Worship Matters

“Think, think, think...” (Pooh says, tapping his forehead.) What’s as good for Bears of No Brain at All as it is for Bears Who Fear Their Brain Is Going--or Gone? Using words, thinking, communicating. It's the last day of June, and I haven't posted anything yet. My goal is to write monthly, but I haven't…

What God Helped Me See

Cries from my children used to wake me in the middle of the night, and after that, my teenagers’ calls saying they’d be late. Now, it’s a call from the bathroom. There are also the unexplained wake-up calls, the ones that tug me out of sound sleep for no reason I know of except to…

How God Surprised Me

The ache in my chest was a tight knot, a familiar feeling.  I tried to tell myself I didn’t care, to push it down as I always had.  I went for a bike ride on our trails, straining hard against the pedals to climb pasture hills as I pushed hard on the knot to force…

What I Learned from Winnie-the-Pooh

"Well, if you're not struggling, you're dead!" I overheard someone say this week. It's a fitting segue as I sit down to dash this off from Athens, Georgia where this morning, my soccer player at UGA had her 3rd surgery in as many years.  Oh my, how this daughter has struggled. When she went off…

Why Hope Holds Me Up

I'm in upstate New York as I write this, enjoying a long weekend with old college friends. We've been hiking and laughing and catching up for three days now in a part of the country I've never seen before, and yet reminds me of the rugged beauty of our beloved Lookout Mountain where we all…