When I brought him home five years ago, I was broken too. His leg had betrayed him, shattering mid-stride when the thrill of the race outpaced his physical capability. His passion had disintegrated into pieces. I, too, scrambled to collect the shards of a dream. Hope for someone I dearly love had collided with her…Read more Shattering Into Joy
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Of Loss and Hope
The grief, the loss of what she had hoped for, lapped as relentlessly, as inevitably, as the breakers crashing again and again—minute after minute, day after day. Repeating their reach and retreat for millennia. Tumbling like so much seaweed, all of what-almost-was washed ashore, only to be drug back out again. Over and over.…Read more Of Loss and Hope
The Final Portal
Just a few days ago we visited a friend in hospice care. I recognized the signs: he stood on heaven's threshhold. Today he crossed over. Strange, the straddling of two worlds. The one leaving, caught betwixt and between, seeing one and then the other. While those who walk with them weep for the coming reality,…Read more The Final Portal
Hallelujahs in the Night
Isaiah 50:10, “Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of his servant, who walks in darkness and has no light, yet trusts in the name of the Lord and relies upon his God?” The treasures of darkness come not to those who avoid pain and suffering. Instead, the treasures of darkness lie…Read more Hallelujahs in the Night
Summer Will Come
My beloved Grandma, otherwise known as Gigi, always used to say, “This too shall pass.” Far more than a cliché to her, the phrase allowed her to laugh in the face of life's tragedies. Her Irish merriment, sprinkled liberally through the years, seasons me still. It broke her heart to send her husband off to…Read more Summer Will Come
All That’s Lost Will Be Restored
I said good-bye to one of my dearest friends, my Grandma, yesterday. As she became more ill and I knew the end was drawing near, I was painting this piece: trying to process grief and also my great hope and faith that, even though the end of her life on earth would come, we will…Read more All That’s Lost Will Be Restored
Tommy John at 16?
The craziest thing happened recently. The roots of the story go all the way back to when my son was just a baby. He nipped at the heels of his three-years-older brother, as obsessed (or more) with anything round. If it could be picked up and thrown, they would find it; and it would fly.…Read more Tommy John at 16?
