Two years.   Two years since I’ve seen her face, heard her voice. Since she sighed the long sigh of death and took up life in a place invisible to those of us on the other side.     How deeply I miss her, my mother. How often I long to pick up the phone and talk to her. After two years, I’m still not able to calculate the magnitude of losing that close relationship with her.   Today, I traveled to the destination of the last trip she took: CEF headquarters in Warrenton, MO. She arrived here just a couple of weeks after hearing that the cancer had spread to her lungs, just a few...

Another Valentine’s Day is upon us, a day to eat cinnamon hearts and chocolate truffles,  to celebrate love and sweethearts. For most of my adult life, it’s been a day to celebrate friendship, which is a wonderful thing.   But I had hoped by now it would be a day when I, too, could enjoy romance, to celebrate the mysterious connection and tension of male and female, the unique love of husband and wife. To receive flowers, or even a kiss.   Whatever happiness Valentine’s Day may hold for you, if you’re a single woman it is probably also another reminder of a hope deferred. My prayer is that...

Thank You for choosing me, for loving me. Your love makes all the difference.   The distance between dusk and dawn, the reach from star to star— that’s how powerful Your love is. The gift of life from death, the offer of paradise over damnation— that’s how selfless it is.   Oh, Father, You held nothing back for me, not even Your Son, giving Him away as the Bridegroom of Dust, a Redeemer through His own blood.   Cleanse me of my selfishness, my focus on my own needs and desires. I surrender my life to You once again, wrapping myself in Your love, that I may have something beautiful and...

I’m reading Timothy Keller’s new book, The Meaning of Marriage. I’m not too far into it, but already I can say that its message is excellent (and so is Keller’s writing—as usual!).   A key truth in the book forms our prayer points for this week, anchored in Ephesians 5:21, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.”   Keller calls this verse “the introductory statement for Paul’s famous paragraph on marriage,” pointing out that men and women must walk in the Spirit to have the servant heart of love that makes marriage work.   Submitting to one another means placing...

Father, How deep is Your love for Your daughters, both the married and the maidens, whether mothers or not. Thank You for creating us to partner with men in creating life, to help lighten their burdens and brighten the world with our feminine spirits.   Thank You for your great mercy poured over our broken world and flawed lives, for Your salvation that reaches into our incredible lost state and redeems us for Yourself. For Your Son, as part of His inheritance.   Today I ask You to encourage our hearts. Heal the places wounded by men or marriage, or the lack of both. Mend the father wounds...