Soon after Mom’s death, I longed increasingly to know what she was thinking and feeling. Did she know how we were doing? Did she even need to know? Only the Lord could answer these questions that arose from my well of sorrow. So I expressed my thoughts to Him during a morning walk in softly falling snow. Later that afternoon I had some free time and did some exercises in my parents’ basement. I put on a CD that my mom had enjoyed. A particularly worshipful and reverent song came on, an anthem of exaltation to the Lord. With great crescendo it moved into these lyrics:   Blessing and honor Glory...

I don’t remember much about the couple of days following my mother’s death, besides writing her obituary and sitting with my entire family in the funeral director’s office. But I do remember the crush of physical and emotional exhaustion, the sickening awfulness that I can’t describe. I had no idea what to say to God or what to read in the Bible. I’m not sure I was able to respond to Him with anything other than outpourings of grief. But at some point during those first days without her—those days of wordless prayer—I felt a desperate need to worship God. I needed someone else’s words, someone else’s...

My mom was like a ruby in the center of a gold setting.    Sandra J. Chantelau January 1, 1951-February 16, 2010   The gold is the life of our family, and she was the gem at the heart of it, radiating from the inside out. Her light and beauty were gentle, softly illuminating our lives, sensitively weaving all of us together like a silken scarlet thread. When we lost her, we lost a big chunk of our hearts, as if that lovely thread had been pulled from the tapestry—compassionately taken by a Father who said it was time for her to come home to Him. Yet, the fabric of our family will by no means...

The storm did its worst. It roared and cracked and thundered, splitting my world into a before and an after. The tempest has passed, leaving devastation in its wake.   My mother is gone.   Was it I who just wrote that beauty and holiness are “both present in the most terrifying of floods and gales that shake us to the core of our being”? Did I think I could sing a song in the fiercest of storms?   Maybe, if a song can be composed of tears.   Last week my mother took her last breath. By the time I got here to my parents’ house, she was already unconscious, lying on a hospital bed in...

No, it’s not storming outside as I write this. I’m actually enjoying a very quiet evening alone in my serene living room on this Super Bowl Sunday night. (Just in case you can’t tell, I’m not a football fan at all.)   In my last blog I talked about the snowflakes that fall from the sky like postcards, noting that sometimes God’s messages to us don’t come so gently—like when rain beats against the roof like hailstones and thunder rattles the windows. (That rattling can be quite unsettling when the windows are as old as the ones in my little house!)   This week I read a gorgeous psalm that...