We never know what a year will hold, do we? In any given 12-month block that we call a calendar year, life can bring endings, beginnings, destruction, rebuilding, second chances,

Imagine that it was your birthday. For weeks, folks around you have been making preparations. They’re decorating. Shopping. Sending invites. Buying gifts. Planning food. Playing music. Gorgeous outfits are purchased.

In the intervening time, these words have bobbed quietly in the back of my mind, twirling like a leaf atop a creek in the fall. Dancing away from the shore, out

I have come to value simplicity. I mean, greatly, and I’ve come to despise the complicated. (It’s the complicated form of religion or way of living that exhausts you and

I’m thinkin’ of mothers today. Like the mother of David, the shepherd boy. She raised a kid who ended up having sex with another man’s wife, then arranged her husband’s

Every once in awhile, it happens. The Cub’s getting ready to head for bed, and he says it, “Mom, wanna come lay down with me?” I’ve learned that sometimes, he’s

Dear Wanderer, I’m sitting here in a quiet house today. The Christmas lights are shining on the tree, all of my men are at work or at school, and the