God didn’t ask us to keep score

Adjusting to life after Claudia’s leukemia was hard and weird in many ways (least of all the global pandemic that landed in our laps a few months later). One struggle I faced was the constant desire to try to pay people back for their kindness to us. I wanted to be the first on the

Reassessing (diff word) Cain

This year, I’m following a chronological Bible reading plan. We’re not hitting every chapter and verse, but we’re doing a sweeping overview. And the view from here feels different. Throughout Genesis, we’re hitting the highlights, the pivotal chapters of moving the story of the promise along, and I’m seeing over and over just how big

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel

Maybe our hospital season knocked if out of me or maybe it’s the wisdom of getting older, but I no longer feel the need to create every routine and solution for scratch. As I thought through my priorities for 2021 and our phrase “DOUBLE DOWN,” I pondered a new (to me) question. How much of

Getting at the Marrow

We hauled our old, lumpy queen mattress to the curb this morning. And since our city restructured its waste management, this was our only “freebie” pickup, so we tore through the backyard shed to make sure we got our money’s worth. Ten minutes later, I looked at the pile. A tableau of ten years of

My 2021 Word of the Year

DOUBLE DOWN. That’s how we’re rolling into 2021. But before I unpack what exactly “double down” means (and gloss right over the fact that it’s two words rather than one…), I’d like to look at how having a word of the year has affected me, particularly my understanding of how any given trip around the