Reflections on the Journey
Hold On My Heart
Double-buckling up front because there's no room left in the car! It really began five years ago. Five years ago the first cords holding my heart intact began their inevitable, inexorable unfurling, taking with them what was never mine to hold onto in the first place. Depositing a first-born child at college is the dreadful opening of Pandora’s Box, for with that first Great Departure...
Lessons From the Sea
I raise my hand to my face to brush aside a tendril of hair that had come loose from my hat in the sea breeze. The fragrance of the sea – salt, fish, sea water - escapes from every pore in my ten fingers and two palms, a pungent reminder of the lobster I had just devoured on the harbor wharf. It doesn’t matter that I had washed these hands several times already. The scent insists on...
Life, Interrupted
Life has a funny way of interrupting our best-made plans. It was supposed to have been a glorious season. A capstone season. An icing on the cake, cherry on top of the sundae season. After working harder than she had ever worked, being in the best shape of her life, leading with the grit and grace that only the best of captains can, my daughter roared into her senior season of...
The Inconvenience of Easter
Jerusalem, Easter 2008 Easter is an inconvenient holiday. Overshadowed by that other big celebration of the Christian faith - Christmas, Easter is increasingly overlooked in our present culture. It seems that once little children outgrow the desire for new Easter dresses and the fun of an egg hunt, that Easter itself gets put on a shelf, tucked inconspicuously behind other...
Traveling in the Fog
The year my daughter was born was one of the “traveling in the fog” seasons of my life. An extended period of time when I had to learn to walk by faith and not by sight. For 18 months I had been watching and scanning two growing masses in my thyroid, praying that the medication would shrink them enough to remove the constant threat of cancer. Scans every 3 months, always...
Questions of Grief
Grief saunters in, uninvited, turning the warmth of summer’s heat cold with winter’s frost. Grief is the unwelcome companion of the death of a loved one. Or the death of a friendship. Or the death of a wish-dream. Grief is stealthy, coming by night in the shadows, catching you off guard. It has a way of cracking wide open what has long remained hidden away,...
