I’ve spent a lot of time the past two days learning my way around WordPress. Reminds me of when we first moved into our current house and I was carrying some clean laundry to the master bedroom. Totally forgot there were three steps down into the den and sort of catapulted myself into the room. […]
You May Laugh, You May Cry Read More »
I sat behind the table and watched them come in–some energetic and eager, some shuffling, bent as though carrying an invisible weight. Others leaned on walkers or canes or the arms of loved ones, their faces deeply lined with memories I could only try to imagine. A noon luncheon is always on the agenda, and
Today I received an amazing note from Trey Sandlin. Trey and our younger son, Luke, were in the same class growing up. We haven’t kept in touch through the years, but his grandmother gave him a copy of Parting the Waters for Christmas, and he wrote to express his thoughts. In the opening paragraphs he
My Dinner with Jacob Action Figures, Flashback Read More »
When the phone rang this afternoon, I let the machine answer it. A woman’s voice stated her name and then why she was calling. Her twenty-five-year-old daughter had been in a car accident, she explained, and had suffered severe brain injury . . . That’s as far as she got before I picked up the
If I had to make a list of things that white Southern Baptists are not famous for, perhaps the top two would be dancing and demonstrative worship. So, when the choir director of a local Baptist church hired me to choreograph his group’s musical production, I tried to approach the project with sensitivity to a
What I learned dancing with Baptists Read More »
If you looked at the pictures from Curtis and Grace’s reception, you saw one of Jacob gently kissing the head of a sleeping baby, Lawson Jacob Grubbs. His mother, Natalie, is fighting tears in the photo. It’s a touching scene, but it’s so much more than that. I want you to know the whole story.
Because I want you to know Read More »
I was sorting some papers and found a few notes I’d jotted when I attended the Friends of Hope camp for brain injury survivors with Jacob last fall. I’m writing this here so I won’t forget it. It’s a spark of joy. A tiny firefly in my memory jar. Toward the end of the day
A firefly in my jar. Read More »
We started singing to Jacob before he was born, and we never stopped. By the time he could lisp a few words, he sang along. We soon developed a game. I would sing all but the last word in a line of a song, and he would supply the missing word. “Stand up, stand up
Four weeks ago today, four bombs exploded in London. Two weeks ago today, four more bombing attempts failed. Today London is on high alert for terrorist activity. According to an online news article I just read, they’ve launched one of the most expensive police campaigns ever. Today. Grace arrived in London about 12 hours ago.
“The distance just dissolves into the love.” Read More »
When I got in my car Wednesday night to drive home from Tyler, I tried to plug Over the Rhine’s “Good Dog Bad Dog” into my CD player. The machinery would whir a bit then spit the CD back out. Between attempts I’d hear snatches of beautiful classical music, but I mostly ignored it. I