This cute little bear showed up on our doorstep on Christmas Eve. A week after my farmers mom met Jesus. Each one of the siblings received the same gift. A bear. The perfect reminder of a wonderful woman. Teddy Bears lined her stairway. They nestled in nooks and crannies in her old farmhouse. They adorned coffee mugs. Mugs filled with steaming coffee as we sat around her farmhouse table. A teddy bear room decorated to appeal to every youngster to enter the room. And so this cute little bear resides in the parlor that was once hers. 6 of her grandchildren and countless ... View Post
It’s A Different Kind of Christmas
This will be the fifth Christmas without our oldest farm boy. It hardly seems possible. Our next farm boy won't be here either. It's a different kind of Christmas. I often wonder how he's doing. How Marine Boot Camp is treating him? What is he feeling and thinking? I wonder this too about our blue eyed, red head who resides in Heaven now. The missing is hard. That Farm Boy loves Christmas. He often will decorate his room in July and play Christmas music as loud as he can. Even before he left, he cleaned his room and strung Christmas lights. It will be a different kind of ... View Post
The Holiest of Nights . . I Gave Birth
Her blue eyes twinkle. Her laugh contagious. She was born on the Holiest of nights. Her time within my womb one of my sweetest memories. A surprise. In the midst of grief. A reminder to pause and be grateful. Slow it down. Pause and wonder at it all. How did Mary feel? How did she travel those roads? I reveled in modern comforts and ease. She came on the Holiest of Nights. After the stockings were hung. After I had called it a day. Her arrival announced. A disruption around us. The first child born with out my beautiful mother in law. She came forth and we named her ... View Post
Looking for Joy
The emptiness lingers. The loss of a child. The days march on. The ebb and flow of life. There, in the space, lies the ache. Continual. The child we bore. No more. Their laughter and joy. Snuffed out so soon. The veil between heaven and earth so close. A breath away. The ache can pull one under. A conscience choice each day to step forward in grace. Advent begins again. 4 Advents since he left. 4 Christmases of reaching to hold on. Hope. Love. Today joy. The tree is in. Light illuminates this dark farmhouse. They twinkle and gleam. The house. Transformed; by ... View Post
This Last Day of 2015 We Will Gather to Mourn and Celebrate a Life
It's been 29 months. Well. The other day. And I could barely get out of my own way. The whole day. The sadness overwhelming. But not for me. Not for my journey. For my Sister in law and her family. For a family in our Community. A father of 4. On Christmas Eve. A beloved husband. And I wept. Repeatedly. For the journey they are on. For a love cherished and honored through the years. Bearing 4 beautiful children. Athletes and scholars. For the wake where they will ... View Post
Advent: A Season of Waiting and Preparation
When you're in the middle of Advent and you're waiting; longing for Christs return. Longing for anything other than this path. Sometimes the pain is so searing it leaves me dizzy. The magnitude of the loss overpowering. Gary plays a message on his phone and it rips my heart right open wide. His voice. Oh, how I miss it. I knew his voice. I recognized it. I knew his step on the stair. These things a mama knows. And when those things are taken away - ripped right away from this life, it leaves you reeling and teetering for something to grasp. Because the hurt and pain of this world cuts like a ... View Post
