Category: faith
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Walk With Me
The other week I took a long walk with a new friend. From our southwest London neighborhood, we walked through the commons to Richmond Park where – oh the blessed history of it all – King Henry the 8th used to hunt deer. Six miles on foot, lunch by the Thames, and a bus ride…
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Give Weeds a Chance
My garden weeds were actually flowers. I just didn’t know it a few months back. I almost pulled those gangly eyesores. But the pink roses that bloomed unexpectedly in my own back garden, without any help from me, prompted me to take a wait and see approach. After all, I had limited horticultural knowledge in…
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Treasure Up
With the hoopla over and done with, Christmas odds and ends now line store shelves bearing garish clearance priced stickers, just as Christmas leftovers line our refrigerator. (Is anyone going to eat the rest of this turkey? Please?) Carol singing and candle-lit services give way to the cold reality of January and our mentality shifts from…
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Queued for Grace
I limped over the UK border at my weakest point, and perhaps that was for the best. The plane ride from Chicago to London was wonderfully uneventful, until the final hour when my insides turned against me. Not the kind of turning that left me reaching for that little paper bag in the pocket in…
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I blinked
Wasn’t it yesterday that we forgot the chicken in the microwave? That day when the nurse called to tell me that my strep test came back negative, but my pregnancy test came back positive, and in our delirious excitement we neglected the chicken thawing in the microwave for dinner, forgot about it until breakfast, and…
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The Sign I want to Revise
The colors lured me in, as did the $3 price tag. (Shout out for second hand shops!) And even though it’s been hanging in my house for a good four years, something about the sentiment has always struck me as… incomplete. Missing the mark somehow. Home is where your story begins. True enough, but lacking.…
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When Hope Died
Oh it was bleak Those days in between. When hope was dead. Not wounded or missing, ill or asleep but dead. Lamb followed freely to the execution tree And before their own eyes, hope breathed his last. Spear pierced in, evidence poured out Body was lowered, wrapped-up, entombed. Hope said it himself, with final exhale:…
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Little Did We Know
This is us four years ago. The autumn when my husband cashed in airline miles and booked a trip to visit friends in France without telling me, (which yes, is romantic, but also stress and argument inducing) and sold his blood–or plasma rather–to help pay for it. You might say we have a wee bit…
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Lights Please
For some of us, March madness has little to do with basketball and more to do with a mild and (hopefully) temporary insanity due to lack of sunlight. One grey day rolls into another. For weeks—or months—on end. Our souls grow grey while our skin grows paler. Where are you, O Sun? We need you.…
Rachel Allord 