AN UNFILLABLE CHAIR: GRIEVING THE LOSS OF A SPECIAL FRIENDSHIP FORMED ON MY BALCONY
Every Tuesday, Jacquie Reed pulled into my driveway, shuffled up my steps with her blue canvas bag over her arm filled with scraps of paper, artwork, and her file folder, and spent an hour and half with me sharing both sorrow and beauty as we worked through her essays...
Till the Wheels Come Off: Loving Well in Midlife Marriage
Featuring an interview with Dorothy Littell Greco, author of Marriage in the Middle My husband and I picked up the minivan from the repair shop and headed out for a much-needed date night. Our van was a problem child, so the shop had become quite the hangout for us in...
Behold Your Son. Behold Your Mother.
This meditation was written to accompany Haydn’s Seven Last Words of Our Savior on the Cross, presented for Holy Week in my local congregation. As you read or listen, I trust you, too, will be struck by Jesus’ tender empathy and fierce devotion even as he was being...
Deciphering Storms: How to Face Uncertainty and the Full Spectrum of Human Experience
If you turned your head and looked only at one side of the sky, it was hard to imagine that the other half looked like it did. All the way to the left you’d find a pale blue backdrop with puffy clouds reflecting so much sun that you had to squint even through your...
As I Wash My Hands {Pandemic Prayerbook Now Available}
Not too long before the concentric circles of Coronavirus found their way to our part of the world, I read an essay about how the American way of life is killing us. The author said, “In spite of a so-called thriving economy in the land of plenty, a great number...
Connoisseurs of Common Glories: How to Stir Up a Full-Bodied Gratitude
In the dusk after Daylight Saving Time ended, I carpooled four middle school boys to a barn party. My maps app called out step-by-step directions through the speaker and I kept my eyes focused on street signs as we wove our way into the country. As soon as we drove...
Prayer and the Fellowship of Suffering: Meeting Gracia Burnham
In uneven jots of Sharpie, my youngest daughter wrote the letters of her name. The capital G sat like a mini spiral next to an oversized lower case r. She spoke the rest of the letters aloud as she wrote them on her name tag: a…c…i…a. I could smell...
Fruitful Work (Under Less Than Optimal Conditions)
For two seasons, I work away at the keyboard, writing the simplest sounds and phrases for people who don’t know them yet. My students, international employees at local warehouses, are the ones who turn America’s internet orders into real stuff that shows up on our...
Scatterbrainedness, Self-Talk, and Steering Myself to a Better Story
I tapped out the letters on my screen: “Leaving an hour late. Story of my life.” The sideways emoji with its tongue hanging out felt like the perfect icon to round out the text message. I pressed it, then hit “send” and let my friend know I was on my way to Chicago...
I’m Darcy Wiley, co-writer of The Yes Effect: Accepting God’s Invitation to Transform the World Around You. I’m an explorer at heart… Read more