The Other Shoe
For Oma Janie and her Pat, whom she and many will miss dearly. It always drops, ya know: that darn other shoe. Just the other night, Jack and I stayed up way too late talking about how hard it is to not live in fear when so many hard things have happened. It’s easy to believe that life is dominated by the drop of that second shoe. It’s easy to believe that happiness is not attainable, peace cannot reside permanently in our hearts. It’s hard to live happily, even when everything is happy. We found a scripture that night that we wrote on our black board at the bottom of…
past, present, Future . . . Part 3
“Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead . . .” Chapter XV, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis I have been thinking for some time now–really, since they gave us Sam’s diagnosis–about the future. The funny thing about the future is that it doesn’t really exist. We buy eighteen month calendars and fill them up, and many of us mamas out there could flip three or six or even nine months ahead and tell you what, exactly, we are going to be doing, and what each member of our family will be doing, on any given day. We put our finger…
past, Present, and future . . . Part 2
“Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead . . .” Chapter XV, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis “Love to the present.” Hmm. Why did he say “love?” Why not “attention” to the present? We all know that love, according to 1 Corinthians 13, is “patient . . .kind. It does not envy [or] boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never…
