Dear Dad, A few months ago, I pulled out the bible you gave me when I graduated high school. It was a hard cover, mottled brown NIV, the pages tearing away at the spine. It’s well-worn. It travelled with me from those first months of Bible college in the UK, through college and university days, […]
Who Will Pluck My Chin Hairs?
by on April 11, 2019 Leave a Comment
My mom and I once made a solemn vow: If either of us is ever in a coma, we promise to pluck one another’s chin hairs. My petite, five-foot-tall mom once grew out a single hair to see how long it would get. The coarse black hair spiraled below her chin until my brother and […]
Brave, Finally
by on January 3, 2019 1 Comment
I am at the big kid playground with my younger son. There is a twisting slide as tall as our house and monkey bars that curve like a giant wave. An eight-foot tall spider web of tubing towers over us. In a few minutes the school bell will ring and we will collect my oldest […]
Out Here on the Brink of Eternity
by on September 20, 2018 38 Comments
It’s lonelier than I imagined, this aging thing. I remember being impatient with my dad when we pushed my parents to move from their much-loved last home, built 15 years earlier, into a retirement community a little bit closer to us. He was suffering from Parkinson’s and atherosclerosis and my mom was wearing herself out […]
We Grieve and Then We Hope
by on June 21, 2018 13 Comments
By Gina Butz | twitter: @gina_butz “I don’t know if I’ll ever find what I have right now again. There’s just so much that’s unknown.” That was our son’s deep cry as we talked one night. He’s slogging through the final weeks of his senior year of high school, staring down freshman year at one […]
