for your joy

If they could live on the beach, they’d be happy forever, these kids of mine.  On Labor Day weekend, they taunted the churning waves and rode the swell on borrowed boogie boards — one last hurrah as summer lets out her final sigh and exhales into hibernation until...

what church looks like

Some people drive by on Sunday mornings and see the church parking lot filled with cars, and they think church looks like kids with their shirts halfway tucked in, hair mostly combed, still rubbing sleep from their eyes.  Like women carrying Bibles and men wearing...

packing

My plan was to stay for six months.Until that moment, I had never before packed my life into two suitcases. What a chore it was to decide which of my possessions would be deemed worthy of viewing the sights of Cape Town.I remember laying out the candidates on the...

dig deep, my girl

She wrapped her four-year-old fingers around the newly acquired piece of candy as if it were more precious than gold.  Her fist tightly clasped, she could barely contain her glee as she skipped around the church parking lot clutching her prized possession.A while...

willing to serve

A few weeks ago, my daughter landed her first summer job. She’s not even nine years old. A mom in our church asked if our eight-going-on-sixteen-year-old would be available to act as a mother’s helper for an hour a week.  She basically just needed someone to go along...