simply me and jeans

The songbirds are what I remember most. The crisp air was a gift as it blew through the open window each night until the sun rose at 4:30 am. The birds started singing as soon as the sunrays broke over the horizon. They didn’t stop until the darkness covered the world at 11 each evening. […]

Father, forgive my hesitant heart. Although I speak of your faithfulness and remember your love, I still falter when casting my net into the water.   Forgive this doubt that lives in the shadows of my disappointments and sorrows.  It doesn’t overtly speak but stirs up “rational” analysis and mitigation in the face of your call. Forward […]

My Daddy taught me to love gardening and I think of him every year around Valentine’s Day.  Why? A couple of reasons. One is that he always brought me the first Narcissus bloom around this time each year. As we reminisced about that, I told mom that I was sorry he didn’t bring them to […]

(This refers to a book my Dad loved called Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach) Sitting among giant cacti. Watching the sun set. The silence almost otherwordly. I hear some sort of bird flying by. It seems so out of place, as if it had lost its way in the world and ended up in […]

Sun – Moon Spring – Winter Day – Night Joy – Pain It’s all life. It’s all yours. It’s all good. There’s not one without the other. No power in love without the possibility of losing it… Someday…Someway… Even when it’s too early and even when it doesn’t make sense and everything seems like insanity. […]

There have been multiple times over the past few years when one of our kids has had to move back home for a short amount of time. I love the life that Steve and I have together but I also love being with my family and am inexplicably grateful that they know we’re here for […]

My daughter, Madison (Mattie), has a cat named Matty.  Believe it or not, he was named when she adopted him from the animal shelter. At least their names were spelled differently. Matty is old and feeble. He’s had a stroke, sheds excessively, walks crooked, misses the litter box, can’t see well and has a hard […]

There are seasons in our lives that God uses to change us and teach us things we may not otherwise have seen.  We don’t usually plan for those seasons and they’re seldom enjoyable, but they’re gifts of grace none the less. A few people have asked me how I’m doing after the events of the […]

Youthful ignorance saw myself as average.  A pretty vessel that could be used by the master but was just as easily left on the shelf as an addition to His collection or passed over in favor of the beautiful vases with curved necks and golden engravings.  Acceptable but not extraordinary. Experience proved myself to be […]

Over the last month, various circumstances have aligned to remind me of an obvious and basic truth of life.  It’s as if God started setting up dominoes a few weeks ago, in an intricate pattern of intertwining circles that He would eventually cause to fall into one another only to reach the end of themselves […]