You’d Be Twelve
My dear little man (who wouldn’t be so little anymore)…Tomorrow is your birthday…And it’s raining heavily outside. It’s never rained…
Continue ReadingRadiant Shades of Color
My dear Buddy Boo…I miss you so, so much. Nine years. You’ve be home with Jesus for nine years now. I got blind-sided by my grief yesterday at church. The second song began and the floodgates opened; I was a blubbering mess. It actually caught me a bit by surprise, as though I was a piñata—suddenly struck…
Continue ReadingGreatest Gift
My Dear Jud Bud…Another birthday. Another year lived in your absence. Another celebration of your life, similar to the last. Another year in the middle of what…
Continue ReadingA Letter From Daddy
Dear Judson, So much has changed these last eight years! When you left, my heart was so broken. I had been grievously wounded, and I wasn’t sure to what degree I would heal or what kind…
Continue ReadingEight Years Now
Dear Jud Bud… My heart longs so deeply for you. This unsatisfied ache of my soul has become part of me…part of each breath, thought, experience…for eight years now. I was driving along the freeway yesterday and saw an RV lot. I had a memory of discussing that RV lot with you. But then I second-guessed my recollection, wondering…
Continue ReadingLauren’s Song
A window of opportunity had opened, so I tentatively asked, “Can I hold her?”
“Well, you can sure try, but she doesn’t always take well to strangers,” Amanda cautioned. This is a phrase commonly expressed by moms of infants or toddlers when someone asks to hold their baby, but in this circumstance, it was unusual…
Continue ReadingEnduring Loss With Enduring Love
Voices were raised, tears were falling, and the distance between us felt like a thousand miles—even though Drake and I were sitting feet away in the same room. This was familiar discord. Conflict between us, as husband and wife, is certainly…
Continue ReadingLasts Forever
A poem for my Juddy this Mother’s Day:
I never thought I’d have the gift
Of being called a mother,
Then one day you came to be
And changed me like no other.
I beamed with delight and cried with joy;
You were cherished from the start.
The moment that our eyes had met…