My mom remembers sitting in the bathtub, her big pregnant belly encircled by the warm water.  She felt me kicking and kicking and then not.  She knew something was wrong with me, her baby.  She prayed, “Lord, don’t let it be her brain. So, when I was born, my appearance was actually a relief.  My…

A middle school girl shouts to me in the busy, white-tiled hallway, “Hey, who are you?” “Well,” I say, stopping to turn on my left foot while the stream of students flows by us.  “I’m Evi Wusk–you say Evi like Chevy–Er, I’m Doctor Wusk.  Who are you?” After telling me her own name, she gets…

The more I start to feel like I understand the Holy Spirit, the more the Holy Spirit is beyond my understanding. And yet, we are promised that if we seek the Holy Spirit, we will find Her.  Ask. Seek. Knock–and things get opened up. Sitting alongside other little kids at short tables surrounded by cinder…

Photo from http://www.movingmountainsformultiplemyeloma.com I open one eye and blink towards the blue illuminated numbers showing 5:50 AM.  With a stretch, I roll over and slip one foot on the floor, gently sliding out of bed.  I dress in the dark, tip-toe past my husband, and quietly close the bedroom door behind me.  Next, I creep past…

I opened the FaceTime Ap on my phone to see my sister, now a mother for the first time.  Her face was aglow, her shirt a soft cotton, plaid, her elbow curled around her little person.  A girl.  She turned the camera over to linger on little fingers. Thank you, little Ellie, for joining us.…

So, at the end of last year, I was set up to be a church youth director.  Life happens.  That didn’t work out.  What did work out was me signing on to teach eighth grade an hour-long commute from home. In many ways this has been the longest year of my life, both in miles…

It feels like this week has lasted fifteen days.  I am writing this near the end of the school year, and my students are writing their names on my marker board during study hall, all wound-up after state and unit testing.   It is ten minutes to the bell, and I don’t have the energy to…

I sit on the crackling dirt,my flip flop spurs up dust on top,like powdered sugarjust holding the black below, muddy. It’s still. Crickets chirp left,then right.Thunder flashes in the west-My chin turns quick. Last year’s corn stocks begin to fade beneath white circle clover flowers. The northwest sunset paints lava red with lavender brushstrokesI try…

The voice that came out of my mouth did not seem to be my own. “YOU AND YOU ARE OUT OF HERE!  FOLLOW ME,” I bellowed as I flung the classroom door open, leaving my students in my churning anger wake. As I tromped down the hallway toward the office, leading these two young men…

My four-year-old swelled with pride as she held out her pink Mother’s Day card, pinching it between her thumb and forefinger, each topped with chipped, neon pink polish.  Her signature was barely legible, but her facial expression said it all. The pride she felt in the card was the pride I felt in her.  I…