The coffee mug slipped from her hands and shattered across the kitchen floor. Debbi stared at the brokenness scattered around her feet — a perfect picture of her life: everything was in pieces. She allowed the tears to come. It wasn’t about the mug; it felt like it was everything, all at once. The argument with her husband that morning. The mounting bills on the counter. Her mother’s declining health. The kids’ constant needs. The church commitments she’d said yes to when she should have said no. Her relationship with her best friend which now felt strained and broken.
“Annie, I’m really concerned about your dad’s low oxygen levels and his worsening, deep cough. At his age, there’s a real danger with pneumonia — something you want to get on top of quickly. And his heart failure is a delicate complication. My strong recommendation is that you take him in to the emergency room.”
“Annie, I’m really concerned about your dad’s low oxygen levels and his worsening, deep cough. At his age, there’s a real danger with pneumonia — something you want to get on top of quickly. And his heart failure is a delicate complication. My strong recommendation is that you take him in to the emergency room.”
prayer
My Decision-Maker
Looking down at the caller ID, I briefly held my breath before answering my phone. It was the doctor following up on our communications about Dad’s symptoms over the last few days.
“Annie, I’m really concerned about your dad’s low oxygen levels and his worsening, deep cough. At his age, there’s a real danger with pneumonia — something you want to get on top of quickly. And his heart failure is a delicate complication. My strong recommendation is that you take him in to the emergency room.”
Learning Obedience
My dad was uncharacteristically quiet, and it worried me. He sat on a bench in his room staring down at his legs with a wearied, almost defeated expression on his face. We’d been dealing with large, open wounds from weeping edema (signs of his progressing congestive heart failure) that extended from both his ankles to his knees, and the healing process was painfully slow.
A Burden Lifted
I’ll never forget the day my debt was cleared. The heavy, soul-disquieting weight I’d been carrying for several years was lifted in a moment — an expression of the mercy of God, the love of the body of Christ, and the profound beauty of grace.
Timeless
Winter had just given birth to the splendor of spring and the notion of swapping my thick knits for lighter layers was an exciting one. I had also been a mama for a full year and felt the need for a little polish and poise in my wardrobe and appearance.
Mr. Steady
She called him her “Mr. Steady.“ She would write it on love notes, address him by the endearing moniker, and even occasionally refer to him as such when talking with others. The husband God had given her was in every way her opposite — but Wisdom knew that his calm, introverted, and consistent nature would be a wonderful complement to her enthusiastic, extroverted, and spontaneous spirit.
A Living Legacy
My fingers glided over the small, wooden jewelry box, tracing the cluster of painted florals that graced the top. I noticed one of the hinges was broken, but that didn’t stop me from gingerly lifting the lid to peek inside to see what treasures lay within.
Battle With the Word
My body had been sounding an alarm that something was seriously off, and my symptoms were growing increasingly strange. What began as a small rash had grown into an unsettling set of problems: numbness in my toes, tingling in my hands and feet, sharp and quick bursts of nerve pain throughout my body — it felt like my nervous system had been turned up to high. While laying down, my heart would pound and I felt like I was breathing through a filter.
Even in the Small Things
My anxiety was rising as I rifled through every possible place I could think of. After two days of searching, I was still coming up empty-handed. I dug around in the garage, in my junk drawer, in the pile of hardware, in the purse I had worn to the store to measure for a new hinge … everywhere I could think of.








