Too hard, she whispered, this life. It had borne down with such force as to suffocate the hope, eradicate the joy, extinguish the scope of what she believed she could handle. Where are you God? she whimpered, her vision fueled by sorrow…(more a cry for help than a questioning of His divine marrow. But would she even make herself follow?) Let me help you stand. She heard it softly, yet stronger than a whisper… she questioned His demand, began to answer but words came out […]
Thanksgiving Day, 2014 Dear Dad, This year is the very first year that I remember not avoiding your phone call. Every year of the past forty I have avoided what most consider a mundane task; and admit that I did this in several not-terribly-clever ways. All of which I was reasonably certain you could see right through, as you had the unfortunate hypervigilance of an individual with the brain wiring of a coyote. Always alert. Always defensive. Paranoid. Added to […]
See me. Feel me. Touch me. Heal me. See me. Feel me. Touch me. Heal me. Listening to you, I get the music. Gazing at you, I get the heat. Following you. I climb the mountain. I get excitement at your feet. Right behind you, I see the millions. On you, I see the glory. From you, I get opinion. From you, I get the story. ~The Who, 1975 You know when you’re at […]
EVERYWHERE she looked…grey. The sky, an unusually beautiful deep robin’s egg blue…grey. The scarlet roses in the garden that usually gave her so much joy and affirmation…grey. The pink-cheeked family that shared a fondness for laughter and loved her silliness…grey. The home that wrapped her in a yellow glow of warmth felt cold and grey. Her job with people who relied on her fiery red passion and the calming green hued wisdom…all grey. There was no escaping this dull hum of […]
EMPTY house. Empty bed. Morning shadows peeking in from closed curtains as if to see if he had made a decision regarding his own fate yet. IT felt almost certainly that it was a one-sided relationship he’d been experiencing these last few years. Most men might not have noticed; however, he was intuitively keen-sensed and more in touch with feelings than he was able to show overtly. There was some kind of unspoken agreement that he didn’t ever remember […]
“Above all, let your love for one another be intense, because love covers a multitude of sins”. I Peter 4:8 I saw this quote today and it stuck with me. I suppose it is love that covers the multitude of flaws people come to us with daily – and we to them. It could be love for mankind in the larger sense, love for a specific cause because we’ve been touched deeply in some way, love […]
“Once upon a time there was a beautiful, smart woman and her handsome, intelligent husband who’d had a sweet little princess, who we’ll call “Joy”(because I want to and it’s my damn story). Life was good. Joy was happy initially, however as she neared her 2nd birthday she seemed bored with her doting mother and indifferent to her father who worked long hours at his job. The mother suggested that they have another baby. After […]
Disclaimer: I mean no disrespect to our Ten Commandments. I seek better options to improve the ways we understand them. Here is my sorry pitiful attempt at making sense of words written in the 13th century B.C. For those of us like myself who really don’t care to follow directions, authority figures, signs, stars, the yellow brick road….what have you, I have taken it on myself to reword the Ten Commandments to sound as if perhaps we weren’t […]
How in the bloody hell do you do it? Do what? Get through days where all you hear about are the media enhanced war stories, suicides, child abuse and neglect atrocities, gun violence on our neighborhood streets, ISIS, Syria beheadings, earthquakes, fires, melting ice caps, Ebola, political deadlock, the 99%… Oh. That. Well, I just have to look at my children. I look into my young son’s deep brown eyes that […]
Don’t close your eyes. This is your life: Are you who you want to be? This is your life: Is it everything you dreamed that it would be? When the world was younger and you had everything to lose. Switchfoot It had a hard-hitting beat. I used to run with it blaring loudly into my earbuds. It has always been one of those songs that has pushed me to think deeply while charging through my pain even harder than I’d […]
They Don't Have a Greeting Card for This 