Grandfamilies: Sideways–Six Things You Can Do When Trouble Comes

Cadence and Lala. February 2014. If you know someone whom trouble has never visited, well, you don’t know that person as well as you think you do. Rotten stuff happens. It rolls right in along an astounding array of avenues, squats down in the middle of our routines, cracks itself open like an old egg, and raises […]


Weekend Reflection: A Black Armband

I mourn with those who mourn. The Lord is near to the brokenheartedAnd saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18 (NASB) Shhh. It’s the weekend. Remove your shoes and step into the stillness. Stop by Sandra Heska King’s place for Still Saturday.  Then stop in at Lisha Epperson’s place for Give Me Grace. (We all need that, amen?) Join us. We […]


One Precocious Misfit

  On the Road Again I can still remember the name of my first Sunday School teacher, Mrs. Carston. I can still remember my first service in “big” church. It might have been Mother’s Day, and I was four or so. My mother held the hymnal down low and traced her index finger under each […]


The Love Expedition

True Confessions (And a Puzzle. Can You Solve It?) I’ve been whining. [Wait. Everyone seems to think my disappointment is justified. I’m unconvinced. Anyway, that’s the tension I’ve been sorting out lately.] See, I’ve been sick a lot the last two years. One thing after another, I thought. I was wrong. Every affliction has been a […]


Drive-By Conviction

Fire Trucks at Cook’s Corner. October, 2007. In Good Faith“Always assume good faith,” my friend Bruce counseled. My graduate-school colleague seldom offered advice, so when he did, I listened. I had naively stepped in a seething campus controversy. Now that I was stranded in quicksand, I kept glimpsing hostile motives sliding around corners just beyond […]