What if this year, for Christmas, we toned down on the things that tend to take us apart, and instead give gifts that encourage “Remember When” moments?

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.

We fail so often to realize it–that those rough seasons are a part of a bigger picture. A bigger season. A season of age. Of days, weeks, months, years.

I knew that something was terribly wrong the moment I opened the door to the microwave. I saw it, but could it really be?

Yes. Yes it could.

Just as He summoned Adam, fresh from the dust of the earth and the breath of God’s lungs, to sit and rest with Him in Eden, He is calling us to the same.

They are small and bright green and gangly; long limbs zig-zagging beneath them and holding them up— not even an inch tall.