Every year, we host a Christmas-ish pajama party and white elephant book exchange with some of our favorite people. The house gets full and messy, the kids are loud, and we sit around, laugh, and share (and steal) some of our favorite books from the past year. It’s a sweet way to share things that…
Our current home rests in a valley, a green and lush space between two stretching mountain ranges. The peaks rest in the background, shadows against every sunset and sunrise, and we mark the changing of the seasons by the snow they gather. My kitchen window looks northeast where, across the fields, rises Mount Jefferson. It…
Simple and beautifully illustrated, William R. Osborne’s God, You Are: 20 Promises from thePsalms for Kids is a small but worthy little volume. Based on twenty “You are _” prayers andpraises from the Psalms, each identifier is drawn out into a simple meditation followed by asentence prayer. While it could be read by older kids…
O God who creates order from chaos,help me now. O Jesus who gathered into Your armsall the children You could hold,draw me close. O Spirit who makes us like childrenso we may approach our Heavenly Father,do so now. Redirect my eyes from the trampled pillows and cracker crumbs,to the shining eyes and insatiable grins,to the…
Imagine every character in your favorite story exists — not between the bindings of their book, but in an entire separate world. A world where characters learn how to be Heroes and Villains, how to sword fight, how to inhabit the world of books and tell their stories rightly. Now imagine a girl from our…
Hercules Beal is not the strongest kid in his class. He is, in fact, the shortest, still waiting on his growth spurt. He is also, thanks to a drunk driver, newly an orphan. As a result, he has to transfer to a closer middle school for his sixth grade year because his older brother (now…
On the side of a county road stands a large wooden sign. It is obviously hand-painted, a protest sign against some proposed government measure. It is eye-catching however, because the sign’s maker punctuated the words by painting a large heron onto half the space. It is large,detailed, outlined in bold strokes. Obviously a great blue…
O God of new beginnings, whose hand brings both the dripping rain and the warming afternoon sun, by which You call forth new life: bluebirds nesting, peonies sprouting, daffodils blooming; we thank you for the hopeful promise of spring. With the awakening of our blood after winter lethargy, it seems that suddenly every moment is…
She stands on tiptoes, watching and waiting. When at last it is time, she turns to wave to me and walks forward, depositing her golden token. She bounces up the single stair, scrutinizing the scene before her. What will she choose this time? The roaring dragon? The leaping orca? Or one of her usual favorites—the…
As the wife of a surgeon and the mother of young children, I am well-practiced in answering every mom’s favorite question: When will Daddy be home? I am also well-practiced at getting on with life as we wait, with preparing meals and playing games that Dad may not be home in time to share with…
I am a book crier. My first time reading Andrew Peterson’s The Monster in the Hollows, I was pregnant, and ugly crying so hard my husband didn’t know what to do with me (“You.. you okay over there?”). My mom tells the story of me as a five-year-old, finishing Charlotte’s Web for the first time,…
I lead a book club, a small group of church friends who enjoy letting me challenge them with a variety of diverse and beautiful books. We have made it through a wide variety of stories, from Jason Reynald’s Long Way Down to Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi. It was over discussion of Virgil Wander (by the brilliant…
