My husband was preparing to go out of town for work for the week, so we stayed home this particular Sunday morning to worship online and see him off. The bold knock on the door gave us pause. With an under his breath, “Can’t they see our ‘No Soliciting’ sign?”, he sauntered to the door. The man asked if he was the parent or guardian of our daughter. She was sitting right by me on the couch and looked at me with eyes rounded as her breathing intensified. Something was askew. As I rounded the corner to the entryway, a police officer stood holding our daughter’s lavender Jon Hart school…

I bought my daughter an old school 35 mm disposable camera. There is something thrilling about hunting for on point photographs to take with the twenty-seven exposures wound tightly inside and the anticipation of waiting to get the film developed. It’s a toss up as to whether photographic efforts will be epic fails or glory shots. A waiting game. In this 35 mm life, we don’t always get to choose which exposures we would like to have heaping helpings of on our camera reel and which we’d prefer to omit altogether. Vacations. Hilarious family pictures. Beautiful scenery. Fill the reel. Cancer. Unexpected tragedy. Continual calamities. Preferable omission. In His loving-kindness,…

I’ve been thinking about the word salvation for quite some time. The fact that that one word is the crux of the difference in our eternal destination. Salvation. Deliverance from harm and ruin by faith in Christ. In Him having everything. As we enter into this season of Lent, I’m freshly awestruck and humbled at the love of our Savior. My life is riddled with mistakes and poor decisions when choices made, to allude to John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, led me off the King’s Highway. The Enemy weaves such cunning narratives. David’s response to wrongdoing in Psalm 51 speaks to the gift of salvation and the steadfastness of the…

Yesterday I was called out of junior high History class to scurry to Lubbock so that our family could welcome my oldest nephew into the world. He just turned thirty. Yesterday I excused myself from class at A & M and drove as fast as I could within limits to make it from College Station to San Angelo so that our family could welcome my niece into the world. She is about to turn twenty-four. Yesterday we welcomed my sister’s youngest, another sweet nephew into the world. Premature, but you wouldn’t know that now with his towering six-foot plus stance. He just turned seventeen. Yesterday, with nerves singing and excitement…

We headed north to the mountains of Colorado for my birthday this year. Sweater weather in June? Yes, please and thank you. On the morning of my birthday, we hiked to see Treasure Falls. Words cannot adequately encapsulate what I felt as I stood at the base of the falls staring at its obedience to the Creator before starting the trek up. We crept along the path, and I came across a tree with exposed roots jutting into the pathway. Gnarled with time but standing firm, proudly upholding its sturdy trunk and bountiful branches. I paused surveying its groaning sways of song; a prompt to slow down and pay attention.…

I’m going to level with you and own up to a fault. Maybe not a fault, but more of a personal vendetta against laundry piles. I equate the vendetta of the laundry pile to the one of getting groceries unloaded in one trip with approximately thirty sacks laced up your arms to the point of not even making it through the door frame without turning sideways. Slight numbness in the forearm is a small price to pay for the internal badge of one trip challenge champion. The other day, determined to get what I needed washed accomplished in one load, I loaded the washer. Admittedly, to the hilt. Long before…

We circled the Lord’s Supper table that Maundy Thursday years ago, thoughtful of the sacrifice He made for the atonement of all of our wicked wayward ways. In the dimly lit sanctuary, we held hands as we prepared to take the bread broken for us. I’d never held her hand before. She sat a few rows behind us each Sunday on the opposite end. I’d seen her many times but had never spoken to her. When it comes to seating arrangements, Baptists don’t branch out much. I reached out to grab her hand and instantly knew she was someone I must know. It felt as though I was transported back…

It was just a Friday night in October. But this was no ordinary night for me. My favorite night of the entire year. The first cold front pushed through with cloaking crisp air meriting the first fire. I watched entranced as glowing amber coals glistened on the grates and the crackling oak emitted plumes slowly spiraling up the chimney. Lately, I’ve become a bit of a slave to a checklist. This enslavement can breed legalistic and exhausted living. Like an internal game of cat and mouse, constantly on the strife, teetering on the edge of burnout, but copiously covering with outward smiles pushing forward to the next check mark. What…

The sunflowers beamed brightly on that balmy July day. Standing tall, following the sun by their inherent nature of heliotropism. During the night, they slowly turn back to the east, waiting for the sun to rise again. Expecting it. Anticipating it. A few words that may describe those sunflowers on that day? Regal. Obedient. Life-givers. Triumphant. In their prime. Within months, those beautiful golden buds that once shone like beacons have withered. What words may describe those sunflowers now? Washed-up. Forgotten. Void. Maybe. The dead, blackened, wilted shell of what once was is visible. But upon closer examination, the seeds remain viable. Seeds that were nurtured and grew to fulfill…

This has been the summer of Maverick. It broke the sound barrier of movie sales and tested everyone’s adrenal gland functionality with its sizzling cinematography. I revisited the original Top Gun a few weeks ago. Tom Cruise (Maverick) and Anthony Edwards’s (Goose) pairing is kismet. They’re aces of the sky, fearlessly executing their training with confidence and split second precision. Tragedy strikes. On a routine training mission, Maverick gets caught in the jet fuel wake of the plane in front of him. He can’t regain control, they enter a flat spin, and he ends up losing his co-pilot, Goose, in the aftermath. This all happened within a span of about a minute.…