“Mama, the song is sad.” He breaks from his block tower construction and catches my gaze. I noticed it after he spent an evening watching The Piano Guys videos on YouTube with his Daddy, this new sensitivity to the emotion of music; a subtle awareness far beyond his two years. He had sat on his Daddy’s lap, wholly entranced […]

My husband slowed the car as we passed by the old wooden gate. “I don’t know, Babe.” We gazed out over the lot, a sparse expanse of tree trunks punctuated by the occasional lopsided evergreen.

Thankful can be a tricky thing to chase down.

But something holy transpires within us when we turn from thinking of thanksgiving as a response, and instead see it as command. Something we were created for.

He walks through the door to find me sprawled across the sofa, yoga pants spattered in spit up and spaghetti sauce.

Finally I see him, and for the first time in days I forget about the call from the doctor telling me that I might have pre-cancerous cells on my cervix.

Rain pelts against the windshield and we welcome it. I delicately unwind the black leather strap from around my journal and open it to a blank page. This next page will decide a lot for us; much more than either of us realize in that moment.