Devotions

When my husband and I were dating, we only saw each other on the weekends. We met at a summer job, but aside from the one month we overlapped there, we never actually lived in the same place until we got married. We started dating a few months after the summer job ended, me finishing up college and him starting a teaching job. Because we couldn’t spend a lot of time together, the time we got was particularly special. Each…

Things are not always what they seem. Knowing how important a good night’s rest is for health and well-being, people often ask me how much sleep I get—and for good reason. As a mother of five kids, I’ve spent many nights awake, feeding and soothing babies, cleaning up vomit from sick kids, and tending children having an asthma attack at 2 a.m. The assumption is that being up with kids at night is torturous and completely exhausting. And while the…

A few years into our marriage, my husband started calling me “The Nose.” There was some irony in this because it is my husband’s side of the family that is known for their large noses. But the reason Phil gave me this nickname had nothing to do with the size of my nose. In fact, it is pretty small. Rather, by the time our fifth anniversary rolled around, I had smelled four different gas leaks in the various apartments and…

When I was pregnant with my first child, my husband and I took a childbirth class at the local hospital where I would be giving birth. It was not a class that favored natural childbirth per se—it was more of an overview of the different ways that women give birth, whether that be with many interventions like epidurals and Caesarean sections, or with few. I loved the vibe of the class—the happy expectant parents, the supportive dads who wanted what…

A dear friend of mine works for an organization that helps resettle immigrants and refugees in Buffalo. I’ve heard from her for years about her work—this Burmese family who hopes to start a restaurant, that Congolese man who was recently reunited with his large family, this Iraqi woman whose name could not be disclosed for fear of violent repercussions. And while I have always admired my friend’s work, I am ashamed to say that I did not pay a lot…

A few years ago, I got a cantaloupe at my local Aldi grocery store. While I’ve always been something of an Aldi evangelist, I’ve also always been suspect of their produce. As an inhabitant of a northern state, my rule with Aldi produce is this, particularly in the winter months: the hotter the climate the item was grown in, the less likely it is to be good by the time it gets to Aldi’s northerly shelves. Of course this is…

I have always been fascinated by the idea of “the grandfather clause”. The phrase dates back to England’s King Henry II, who declared when he became king in 1154, “Let it be as it was on the day of my grandfather’s death.” His cousin Stephen had been king after a series of family conflicts and deaths, and Henry was glad to have the throne restored to his direct family line. Henry wanted several of Stephen’s decrees undone, which led to…

It started innocently enough. We recently moved into a new house, and in our old house, we had a square dining room and a lovely old set of cherry wood dining room furniture, including a large round dining table that filled up the room nicely. In our new house, however, the dining room is long and rectangular, so my husband and I decided to look for new furniture to fit. I had used Facebook Marketplace a few times before, without giving…

“I hate life.” My 9-year-old daughter slumped on my lap, a tear meandering down her cheek. “Oh honey, I know. I’m so sorry,” I said, pulling her close. “I hate Zoom and remote learning and I hate it when Daddy gets us school lunch even though we’re not at school and I hate it that we’re not going to Grandma and Grandpa’s for Christmas. Also, I have a stomachache. And my eye hurts.” I almost launched into my Pollyanna speech…

I wrote a devotion on this blog six years ago, and because the lectionary is on a three-year cycle, the Magnificat passage that I used for that piece is one of the Advent readings again this year. I wrote about my dear friend Mike, who blessed and vexed us with his irrepressible love and badgering for eight years. Mike died suddenly on March 23, 2020, and as I read Mary’s song in the book of Luke, I think of Mike…