The sitting down to write this comes with revelation that I have had a surprising number of encounters with the supernatural. This one, above all the others, lives in me like some permanent alteration of my being, like a facelift on the inside.

As you can see by my expression, catching a football off a diving board is serious business. There are the calculations. The intense concentration. And the ability to balance until the timing is just right.

I awoke with this image in my head, of a lawn mower tied to a rope and hoisted down a steep slope. But it wasn’t some inexplicable dream. It was a scene from my past.

If there were trips to Paris or road trips through the winding roads that lead to Provence, these will not be what I remember in my last days. Only that he held my hand and guided me in cadence to some seemingly far-away music, surrounded by an invisible crowd.

This is the image my heart draws when my doubting mind asks what is it that I have done with my life.

I am a designer who has fallen more in love with transforming the interiors within us, than with those that surround.

I’ve come back from a magical place drenched in the smells of Heaven. And my whole heart aches.

Luxury is not something created for our convenience. It is a pasture of green grass where the cattle graze.

This week I am filled with musings of life and death, of our comings and goings and all the juicy living in between.

Before she leaves, I notice a primitive tattoo in a kindred bluish hue across the artery made popular by those who attempt to take all of it, even breath away—“Just Survive.”

This is the month my second grandbaby will leave the safety of a solitary liquid realm of heartbeat rhythms and mama’s sweet coos and kisses to join me and my own mama as the third generation in a row of May babies.

More than once I’ve checked my luggage, boarded the aircraft and nestled into my seat only to bolt through the open cockpit door and onto the jetway before realizing all the implications of what I had done.

When we pray into another’s situation, the forcefield of stagnancy is pierced. And through the hole created, a life-renewing energy moves in. This energy begins to devour the unhealthiness; first there is this subtle, curious difference, then an otherworldly lightheartedness is felt.

I think I stopped wanting something. At least something big. Maybe even something as necessary as breath.

Getting to know ourselves better is an extraordinary mission. The knowledge we seek is so often already within us. So, why do we hide it from ourselves?

The secret to life is to undertake something bold enough to make you pause, and necessary enough to do it anyway.

What is precious, it seems, is not the moment just before us, but the longings of a life we once had, remembered as better than the life we live.

We were certain. Not that He wanted the house for us. But that we wanted it for ourselves.

I imagine hanging by a rope off the edge of a cliff and deciding to release my tightened grip. There’s the possibility of a freefall, but what if instead I am dangling only 10 feet from the sturdy ground that lies directly below?

I imagine hanging by a rope off the edge of a cliff and deciding to release my tightened grip. There’s the possibility of a freefall, but what if instead I am dangling only 10 feet from the sturdy ground that lies directly below?