simply. grant and lois

Photo By: Laura Ruth

It’s noise and frenzy outside my window as the weed wacker eats my bushes and inside all is quiet.  By that, I mean not productive.  It’s another one of those days.  The kind where looking at a computer screen hurts your eyes and not doing it seems out of the question. [...]

Photo By: Laura Ruth

March, April …  is it really almost MAY?  The months tick off like a clock, faithful to come and go, and somehow I manage to barely see their passing.  It’s felt like that lately.  We moved.  I am now greeted by a tree, green grass and the postman each morning and [...]

Photo By: Kimberly Blok

It’s been weeks, no … months since I last wrote a line, a memo.  I’ve been in what I call a slump.  That’s the sugary way to say it. Part of this comes from accepting the lazy tendency that demands her way.  The reality is, I have walked right into the [...]

Holidays come and go.  I began mine on a plane to Rome just before Thanksgiving and when we landed in Venice (only a slight detour) a change of pace was expected.  I didn’t realize the changes I would make.  I began trading my silent and precious moments with Jesus for moments filled with cultural joys; [...]

I am thankful! Thankful for a voice, which seems to already be on vacation.  Thankful for rain … I did feel it on my skin this morning and walked beside the umbrella with joy.  I am thankful for life, which is worth living.  I am thankful for Jesus.  I am thankful!

Between the lines of these [...]

Photo By: Carolyn Cochrane

I was leaving home for the first time in awhile.  Alone, this rings of a young girl, braving the world, leaving home truly for the first time.  My story is somewhat different.  I am married, old enough to know better by now, and living in a shelter of my own making.

Women’s [...]

Photo By: Laura Ruth

There are moments when every part of me is dry.  I need quenched and in the long, dry moments I often don’t know what to say.  How do I articulate my need?  If we need, truly, we are helpless.  Not in the way of physicality, but utterly void of ability to [...]

Photo By: Kasia Koniar

Sometimes, I just need to get away.  I had forgotten this and must admit I wasn’t really aware of my need as I left to retreat with God and a host of women just a few weekends ago.   I signed up for one reason, well, two:  my conceptual brain [...]

Photo By: Kasia Koniar

I’ve always loved the idea of a masquerade ball.  Perhaps because I’ve never been to one, unless you include movies watched, and I find even movies aren’t made up primarily of balls and pretty masks.  I always wondered why a mask was so fruitful in knocking people off someone’s trail, when [...]

Photo By: Kasia Koniar

Your name is a strong and mighty tower, your name is a shelter like no other, your name, let the nations sing it louder … nothing has the power to save, but your name…

I looked ahead, through the rows of heads.  Towards the front was a little girl.  She [...]