Grief. It is heavy as it sounds, wrenching with desperation toward the flatness of the word’s final f. Flat like the smack of an anchor hitting the water before it sinks, downward, downward to the bottom of the sea.   Yet Handel’s Water Music Suite cascades over the airwaves, regal in its procession, glorious and joyous, as I write.   Days later, grief continues to swell after the muddy Cumberland drowned my city’s treasures, including the Schermerhorn Symphony Center and the Opryland Hotel, not to mention personal homes, businesses, livelihoods, memories and family members.   Family...

My mom was like a ruby in the center of a gold setting.    Sandra J. Chantelau January 1, 1951-February 16, 2010   The gold is the life of our family, and she was the gem at the heart of it, radiating from the inside out. Her light and beauty were gentle, softly illuminating our lives, sensitively weaving all of us together like a silken scarlet thread. When we lost her, we lost a big chunk of our hearts, as if that lovely thread had been pulled from the tapestry—compassionately taken by a Father who said it was time for her to come home to Him. Yet, the fabric of our family will by no means...

No, it’s not storming outside as I write this. I’m actually enjoying a very quiet evening alone in my serene living room on this Super Bowl Sunday night. (Just in case you can’t tell, I’m not a football fan at all.)   In my last blog I talked about the snowflakes that fall from the sky like postcards, noting that sometimes God’s messages to us don’t come so gently—like when rain beats against the roof like hailstones and thunder rattles the windows. (That rattling can be quite unsettling when the windows are as old as the ones in my little house!)   This week I read a gorgeous psalm that...

There’s something about looking out the window in the morning and seeing the gentleness of snow covering everything, the delicate glass of ice twinkling from the branches.     Perhaps it’s because falling snowflakes are, among other things, postcards from the sky (a lovely line I’m borrowing from the title of a beautiful orchestral composition by Marjan Mozetich.) Snowfall is another way that the “heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1).   Here in middle Tennessee, it’s rare to look out the window to a world of quiet whiteness. It is perhaps the infrequency of snow that makes me...

I began the new year with great hope. A new day, a new year. New and unlimited possibilities! Change was coming, and I knew it. I felt excited.   But just a few weeks into 2010, I stopped feeling excited. Instead, I began to feel discouraged. And I’m not the only one. Several people I know have experienced a depression that set in as the month advanced. And that’s what I began to feel too—a melancholy pressure stifling hope and stealing the day-to-day joys of life.   Maybe it’s because there have been more clouds so far this year than sun. Maybe it’s the post-holiday winter blues that a lot...