Once a week I sing with a community choir that rehearses inside a local church’s sanctuary. The building is relatively new because it was reconstructed after a fire, but it has several features that harken back to a Gothic cathedral. Sweeping timber arches spread across the lofty ceiling like the hull of a ship. Three…
Before I planted my garden this summer, I read a book about homesteading. No, I’m not becoming a farmer. Frankly, my husband and I are too old for a new venture like that. Initially I wanted to learn about ways in which I could apply some of the homesteading concepts right here in the suburbs;…
On my last visit to the nursing home, I had two separate encounters that spoke to my heart about how we use our most valuable resource: time. The first experience was not exactly unique in that we deal with this every Sunday. There’s a resident who is incredibly vocally impaired. His mind is perfect. It’s…
I just got back from the beach. It was a quick, five day trip to Florida. As usual, I went prepared with a book, my journal, and my laptop. I ended up not using any of them. Since two of our five days were spent traveling there and back, we had a total of three…
I’ve been doing a lot of work lately. Hard work. And I don’t mean manual labor. I mean the difficult work of sitting with your feelings, examining them, and processing them. In my last therapy session, I had such a breakthrough moment that my therapist gently encouraged me to write about it in the hopes…
A few weeks ago, on a Friday night, we were sleeping in our basement because the weather forecast was predicting strong storms for our area overnight. Around 5am, I was awakened by loud noises. At first, in my sleepy daze, I actually thought we were in the middle of a tornado. There was no train…
(part two of my previous post….) “I wonder as I wander out under the stars…” We’ve had some frigid weather since Christmas. We had snow, followed by ice, followed by more snow, and it covered the ground here in Kentucky longer than normal because it was so cold. I love how quiet the world seems…
There are many things I wonder about at this time of year. I wonder about silly things like what it would be like to go “a wassailing” or what the words of “Good King Wenceslas” really mean. And then I wonder about more serious things like what Mary’s family must have thought when she told…
Perhaps you’ve heard of the great thermostat wars…the battle each household must fight over who controls the temperature of the house. We fight that one in our house, but we have an additional battle– the Christmas lights fight. I love Christmas decorations. I go all out. I have lights all over our house, and not…
For the past several years, I’ve been expanding my creative outlets and thinking about what it means to create. Those of you who know me would probably say that you’ve always considered me to be a creative person, but I never saw myself quite like that. I think that’s because I was comparing my creations…
(This is an update to a devotional I wrote two years ago.) I can’t believe it’s been two years since I watched the demolition of my grandparents’ house. It still doesn’t seem real sometimes. My family has lived in Kentucky since the days of Daniel Boone. In fact, as some of the first settlers, our…
In Part 1, I mentioned Job and his three friends who came to sit with him during his time of intense suffering and grief. For seven days and nights, they ministered to him with their presence. But soon, they began to offer Job their opinions on why he was experiencing these tragedies. I imagine that…
Recently I was asked to pray with a nursing home resident who was nearing the end of her life. Other than her name, the only thing that I knew about her before I arrived was that she was in her fifties though she looked like a much older woman, and that she had had a…
I’m convinced that most people today conflate the concept of manners and respect, and I do not believe that the two are the same. The Oxford online dictionary defines manners as “a person’s outward bearing or way of behaving toward others.” Think of it like saying “please” and “thank you,” “yes ma’am” or “no sir,”…
For Mother’s Day my husband took me to my grandparents’ farm. And when I say “farm,” I mean 110 acres that includes fields for growing crops, an old barn that used to house tobacco, woods where you can still see the old wagon trail if you look closely enough, and a creek that cuts through…
When I was a little girl, there was no question that my family would spend Easter weekend with my grandparents and attend Sunday church services with them. This also meant that my sister and I would wear frilly spring dresses and our patent leather white shoes. Some years I had dainty little gloves, a hat,…
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