It’s Springtime as I am writing this, but today I’m thinking of Fall and Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday. It’s a day for family to be together and to enjoy all the festive food. For my American Southern family, that has meant preparing and eating mounds of roasted turkey,...

“Scars are memory. Like sutures. They stitch the past to me.” China Mieville It’s been more than 22 years since my ex-mother-in-law sewed together the cushions for her four dining room table chairs. She used a plastic tablecloth with little teapots all over it. Burgundy and green, golden rod...

I remember the first time we peeked into the Vietnamese restaurant a couple blocks from the main campus of Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital. I was with my son Zack and we were looking for an inviting place for lunch. The narrow yet bright eatery looked clean and welcoming. There...

“Do you want to go to breakfast?” I looked up from my journal, pen pausing on the page. My first thought was that I didn’t have time. I hesitated long enough for him to offer to cook instead. “Yes,” I said. “Let’s go to breakfast.” We changed out of...

A season of sabbath led to the unexpected gift of finding myself as a member of a beautiful confessional community. A confessional community is a space where each member of the community has pledged to be in deep relationship with each other and pledge to be known and know...

“What is one way I can love you better?” I asked my husband as we sat across the table from each other. It was one of those half-awkward, half-hopeful newlywed conversations that we had sometimes as a couple learning how to live together well. As an international family —...

Welcome! Come on in ya’ll! Let me share with you the story of my dining table. Over our nearly thirty years of marriage, my husband and I have had numerous tables, but none quite as grand as this one we purchased from a friend who made it with his...

When my nephew was six weeks old, my husband and I got the privilege to babysit him overnight. I was so excited to have him overnight, as I loved that sweet boy like he was my own. We didn’t have a crib or bassinet, so I went out and...

“[The table is] the raft to ride down the river of our existence even in the hardest times.” Adam Fopnik, The Table Comes First When he sits down at the end of our long dining room table across from my husband that first Christmas after he had been clean...

I don’t normally cry over tacos, but this time was different. It was a gorgeous summer evening, and my husband Mike and I were hosting our life group leaders for dinner. As we sat down in the backyard over homemade tacos, our guests began asking about our testimonies –...

The story of our supper table started about 1983 when my first husband and I bought our first house. We needed a dining table and heard about a furniture auction in Battle Ground where we lived. We attended the auction and there was a reproduction claw foot oak table...

Hospital food. It isn’t the best nor is it the worst. It is never something I wanted or asked for however, God had other plans. When Chris and I were 20 weeks pregnant with our second child, we found out that something was “wrong” with our son. It turned...