We sat next to each other on the sofa with his tablet between us. The fireplace was dancing with fire and Christmas music was tickling our ears. Our annual online Christmas shopping was underway. Talking about our loved ones as we move through the list and anticipating the hoped for delight has become as much a part of the tradition as making the purchases, and we appreciate the leisure with which we can share ideas and focus on the recipients. This is a planned event, and we don’t rush it. We know going into it that we’re committed to the time, no matter how long it takes. Later, I was…

Thanksgiving was always my father’s favorite holiday, and he instilled in us a love for hearing one another’s specific gratitudes. (I know that is not really a word, but it should be.) We all knew to come to the feasting table with something ready to share. I must honor my mother here, as well, since she, the cook, had to be prepared for the lengthy time it would take all of us to go around the table before we could dig in. My brother-in-law, who has assumed the patriarchal duties since daddy went home to Jesus, carries on this tradition, and it sets the tone for our gathering beautifully. Of…

I awoke this morning in someone else’s home. The bedroom was charming, with pale yellow walls and dark traditional furniture. The bed coverings were a rich red and pale gold, and the window cornices matched the color scheme without matching the pattern. Just different enough to be pleasing to the eye. (I have a thing about too much symmetry.) There were fresh towels and bottled water in the guest bathroom, which had a faint but heavenly scent. I was wrapped in a cozy and warm hospitality, and I smiled with happiness. We had been invited to spend the night with our dear friends so the men could attend a gathering…

My heart has a memory. This heart that sometimes seems a bit warn and calloused swelled within me today a fountain of love and gratitude that splashed upwards and called to my mind a happening. It was a good number of years ago, several more than a decade anyway and not too long after I had begun a new life with my teenagers whose father was absent from our lives. I was on a daytrip with some of our church family to visit a mission run by friends and members of our small faith community whom the Lord had sent out from us to a small town in the North…