Category: Thankfulness

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Spring’s Honey

The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold; sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them your servant is warned…Who can understand his errors? Cleanse me from secret faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; Let them not have dominion over me.

Spring knocked on the door of my garage this past weekend. The sun, long barred by layers of packing tape, sprung into re-opened cardboard boxes, boxes that had been sealed and stacked from a move that happened over a year and a half ago. Its sudden light scattered silverfish. I pulled out clothes and kitchen wares, books and blankets. I held them up in the light to name them. In the light, they received new purposes; things to be cleaned and put to use again, or things to be discarded. In this spring cleaning, hidden things are being laid bare. The beginnings of order are leafing in my garage. Continue reading “Spring’s Honey”

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Night Slips Gently

The day’s events parade across the streets of my mind as sun slips behind trees; the day is coming to an end. On a ticket in the kitchen of the restaurant where I sit is my order for glazed salmon. I am wrapping up a day that has been spent mostly alone, away from home. I’m midway through my return home now, watching out the restaurant window as the curtain falls on a day I have fully savored. Continue reading “Night Slips Gently”

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Regarding the Clouds

My 13-year-old has been obsessed with weather since the day she was wobbly legged, teetering from one foot to the other in a toddler rain dance. She could tell me about the towering cumulonimbus with its anvil head and tornado spawning downdrafts by the time she was 5. I remember the hours I spent with her in “exposure therapy,” walking her outside under the porch roof in the middle of a thunderstorm, asking her to rate her fear on a scale of 1-10, then making her stay in the middle of her terror until the 10 backed down to 9, then 8, then 7 before heading back inside. The face-your-fear style of therapy mitigated her storm-related anxieties, but the intrigue of a good storm has continued to captivate her as she’s grown. Continue reading “Regarding the Clouds”

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Spring In the Mix

The window frames a spring sky, its blue background set behind the delicious green of new leaf, a green so bright that it seems as though the sun is dancing atop every shoot, setting each aglow. A light, warm breeze plays at the open window. The songs of birds make a four-dimensional show of daylight. With spring well established and everything lush and glowing, it’s hard not to feel a sense of hopeful contentment. But as I write, a soul full with spring and the quiet of a morning with kids out of the house, my desktop displays the morning emails and Facebook posts. One is a journal chronicling the story of a 13-year-old boy who has traveled to Shands Hospital in Gainesville, Florida for cancer treatment. My husband and I used to work with the boy’s dad, and the news of this cancer was a shock (isn’t it always when it’s more than a name but someone you know?).  A Facebook status by my old college roommate provides an update on her struggle with lupus that has proven “treatment resistant” and kept her on a steady course of steroids, chemotherapy and gammaglobulin injections. Another friend has flown to Texas for a stem cell transplant in the hopes of curing his leukemia. Another college roommate of mine has been posting updates on Facebook about her 4-year-old niece who is undergoing treatment for cancer. And amidst the chirping of birds, I am struck with the juxtaposition of children with cancer and spring leafing through my open windows, a juxtaposition that gives me considerable pause. Continue reading “Spring In the Mix”

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Thanksgiving

My first grader proudly handed me this card after school yesterday:

Thanksgiving Card

Happy thanksgiving! I am thankful for
my mom she maks diner.
I am thankful for my hous becus
it ceeps us safe. I am thaynkfull for
my sisters becus thay like too play with me.
I am thankfull for my dog
she is vereree sweet.
I am thankfull for my Dad Beecus
he maks munee for are famlee at werc.

I too am thankful for my son and also for my husband, dawturs, frends, hous and werc! For any and all of these things, we are vereee blessed. Happy Thanksgiving, frends.