Today was an ordinary Tuesday in just about every way. I used my yellow umbrella to get from the door to the car. I had my performance evaluation at work. I came home and made soup, then finished the reading for this week’s assignment in my master’s program. But it is not an ordinary Tuesday because it is the sixth anniversary of the worst Tuesday of my life: the one on which my mother died. And I can no longer talk to her about any of the ordinary events of my day.     Yet, today I felt a different kind of joy in several small, caring gestures—the ones I received, and the ones I gave. They...

I look out over a rain-rinsed evening from my third story library window, a cup of hot tea sitting on the windowsill. The air is calm and quiet; a few streaks of clouds are pale pink. I can hear the song of a few crickets as I watch the heavy white blooms of my crepe myrtle tree bob in the slight breeze.     The weekend is closing; another week is about to begin. Sunday nights are a time of transition, from rest to routine. It occurs to me that life is full of transitions; mini ones like this one, recurring weekly; larger ones like the transition from summer vacation back to school that many...

This weekend, I’ve been thinking that if I feel anything in light of this great, wild world springing with frothy cherry blossoms and deep green grass, it should be  humility.   I’m humbled that God created such beauty for us, that He thought we were worth it. And that we are worth His love and intervention in our lives. And, mostly, I’m humbled, deeply, in the face of the cross.   The cross is the center of everything, and Jesus was the one on the cross. In the wake of such death and horror was life. That’s why He’s at the center. In His wake is life, resurrection, restoration: spring....

It is a wintry Saturday morning, and I’m growing increasingly congested. I don’t feel like doing much except for making breakfast and sitting with my husband.   After scrambled eggs and toast, I drag a box of tissues over to the couch where we open our Bibles. And mid a nose-blowing, sluggish Saturday morning, the Holy Spirit  speaks. Envy, Proverbs says, is rottenness to the bones.   Hmm. I grab the new Oxford English Dictionary that has recently arrived in the mail  from Barnes and Noble. Envy, it says, is a discontented longing aroused by someone else’s possessions or qualities.  ...

Today is heavy with cold and ice and clouds.     I’m propped up in bed, where I’ve spent most of the day due to whatever nasty ailment that’s going around, and I look out the window. The ice-encrusted seed pods on the Crepe Myrtle tree pull the branches downward, as if in sadness.   The imagery of sadness comes easy; it was this day, five years ago, that my mother left us. I had determined to make this a day of celebration in remembering her life, and I am forever blessed that she is my mother. It is hard, however, to not remember the day of her death. My sister has memorialized that...