deep sea painting (acrylic on wood)

The Road Home: When You’ve Gone Too Far

I had thought I could always go home. But suddenly I realized I didn’t know how. My trail of crumbs had long been eaten. I had lost my way.

Adult Men in the Girls’Bathroom: Cruz and the NC Bathroom Law

“Grown adult men — strangers — should not be alone in a bathroom with little girls.” — Ted Cruz bashing Trump for saying people should be allowed to use whatever bathroom they choose. In case you haven’t heard, they’re arguing over North Carolina’s “bathroom law” requiring people to use bathrooms corresponding to their biological sex. One problem […]

The Worst Thing About Being a Parent

We carry him in, our day old son. We hug him close, pushing back the receiving blanket to expose his little heel. It’s just a heel stick, the nurse says. She jabs it in. He lets out an infant cry, a squeal. I feel the jab in my heel, my heart. I’m not sure where. […]

One Last Time

Brain dead. Like anything dead, it seems so final. I’m sitting beside my father’s death bed. There’s that word again. Death. It’s why you say goodbye when you can. Why you say, thank you and I love you, over and over. So when the only sound is the shallow breathing of the ventilator and the […]

Keeping Up with the Joneses — In Which I Admit to Living Beyond My Means

I understand the importance of living within my financial means. And now that I’m doing Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace, that concept is really being driven home. But when it comes to time and energy, I regularly live beyond my means. Everyday I’m allotted 24 hours. That’s my limit, the extent of my daily budget. But […]

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Abram & Sarai | The Big Idea: Part 1

Then the sun dropped behind the horizon, and in the darkness Abram saw a smoking firepot and a flaming torch pass between the halves of the carcasses. The Lord himself was making a covenant with Abram that day.

The Killing | Cain & Abel: Part 2

The killing had been quick and easy. Too easy. Abel had suspected nothing and offered no resistance. In a moment the light had gone out of his brother’s eyes, “like one of his sacrificial lambs,” Cain thought, but immediately he dismissed it from his mind. He had just finished washing his hands. The dirt from […]

The Offering | The Sacrifice of Isaac: Part 4

Abraham turned to his son, the rope stretched between trembling hands. Isaac looked at his father, and a hoarse whisper escaped his lips, “Father … .”

The Walking Dead | Adam & Eve: Part 2

The woman he loved had her arm outstretched. She was offering him the fruit, the juice still dripping down her chin. The man watched himself take a bite.

Hagar and Ishmael | Collateral Damage

Hagar had always been carried along by the current of other people’s lives. In Egypt she had been sold as a slave to the highest bidder. Abraham bought her and Sarah took her as her personal servant. They had brought her to Canaan, and then quite unexpectedly, her own body, her womb, had been called into service.

Degrees of Separation

I watch the monster who is me pressing the blade into my brother’s flesh until his blood runs hot over my own flesh. I see my brother’s face, the shadow passing over it when he realizes what I’m about to do. I rewind and see him running towards me from across the field. He is just within arm’s reach. I can choose to embrace him, but instead I pull my knife from its sheath.