Grace for this new school year
When I pray in my garden, I offer up all the burdens, fears, inabilities, and inadequacies I feel I currently possess. Through the disciplines of silence, solitude, and prayer, I am changed; my mentality [...]
echoes of Opa’s life
Today I'm remembering my wonderful Opa, whose Heavenly birthday is August 3rd. Nico was a gracious man of character and strength, kindness and compassion. I feel thankful for the heritage of faith and integrity [...]
my determined daughter
So much of mothering — well, for me anyway — has been a balancing act of leaning forward and closing in; then backing off, and retreating. Sometimes this means engaging my daughters and challenging [...]
a convergence of nature
A green hummingbird, a yellow swallowtail, a fuzzy bee all converged on the garden late afternoon and observed both withering and flourishing blooms. “Such beauty is fading, and took so long to pollinate,” the [...]
for 30 years now
30 years ago, my family moved from Los Angeles County to Colorado Springs, Colorado, and I was fifteen and going to be a junior in high school, scared, angry, and determined to return to [...]
Dear Great-Opa Pieter
Dear Great-Opa Pieter — If I could ask you one thing, today, I would wonder aloud — How did you survive when your world was muted, beaten, starved for six long years away? How [...]
Shaping Character
My three children require my entire heart and mind and emotional capacity. Shaping character is as painful for me as a mother as it is for their tender spirits. Some days the discipline bit [...]
Sometimes grief looks like
Grief doesn’t always look like grief. It disguises itself in addiction, acting out, anger, sarcasm, toxic friends, impatience, isolation. That’s the short list of some expressions of my own grief. Grief — for me [...]
looking for God to reveal himself
How many times have I asked the Lord to reveal Himself, provide an answer, and I remain near to Him, believing God for His guidance? Yet I sometimes sense silence, or absence, or delay? [...]
5 May 1945: Dutch Liberation!
Their Queen announced victory and peace for the Dutch people and claimed 5 May 1945 as their Victory Day, as papers were signed in Wageningen of a treaty, with Germany’s admitted defeat. Hundreds of [...]