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Showing posts with the label beloved

Mom: I Always Knew I’d Miss You . . .

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Mom, I guess I did know when I stood on this same porch all those years ago, and I took commemorative photos in the yard July 25, 1990, I would never live at this address or in the same town as you for the rest of my life.  I guess I had somehow thought I’d counted the cost of spreading my wings and taking flight. Your 23 plus years preceding that moment — of loving me, teaching me, chiding me, disciplining me, laughing with me, and guiding me had attempted to prepare me for whatever I’d face once I stepped off that porch as a full time resident of your home. I guess I thought I was ready for the many years of phone calls, cards you learned to make yourself, occasional surprise care packages, short visits to wherever I’d moved to next, and the ever-heart-in-my-throat moments with my bladder fairly bursting as I always made those last 100 or so miles to your house at breakneck speed, because I couldn't bear to make another potty stop when I knew the Louisville

BEHOLD the Beloved

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With so much time to think, I have been pondering and avoiding the pondering. How about you? Are you using this time to dig deep into your own soul and your inherent motivations for why you even do life the way you’ve chosen to do it? Are you asking yourself the tough questions? Delving into your own psyche and seeing how a time like this pandemic unveils the best and worst of who we are at our very cores? To be perfectly honest and keep this post gut-level real at its very ugliest, I have spent far more time contemplating my next quarantine snack than my core motivations. I’ve been self-focused on my own allergy-provoked sniffles and what they might mean beyond the seasonal pollen-ridden air, instead of seeking to check my heart and why I care so much about so many things that truly matter little in the grand scheme of who God created me to be in the first place. I have scrolled and jumped from one report to the next, one meme to the next, one complaining tirade to the nex

He Knows Our Names

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As most of us already know by the widespread news coverage and swiftly sweeping social media posts of yesterday, Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna (Gigi) were killed in a helicopter crash, along with seven other passengers including the pilot. Immediately this morning upon engaging on social media, I found myself scrolling through tributes, heartfelt words of sympathy, well wishes, and prayers offered to Vanessa Bryant and her three surviving daughters. I heartily include myself in those numbers today, because I cannot fathom the effort just breathing in and out takes for a woman faced with such a devastating blow and loss beyond what any of us should ever have to bear. The loss of a spouse has its own set of heartbreak, but to compound that agony with the loss of a child in the same breath is beyond any superlatives I can think of in my vocabulary storehouse. So, as often as Holy Spirit prompts me, I shall gladly intercede on behalf of Vanessa, Natalia, Bianka