In counting gifts, to one thousand, more, I discover that slapping a sloppy brush of thanksgiving over everything in my life leaves me deeply thankful for very few things in my life.

More important than a clean house is a close family.

The prayers we weave into the matching of socks, the stirring of oatmeal, the reading of stories, they survive fire.

No one told me that it would all happen at the same hallowed time: Mothering is at once the hardest and the holiest and the happiest.

Comparison is a thug that robs your joy. But its even more than that - Comparison makes you a thug who beats down somebody - or your soul.

God appoints people who do disappoint - to point to a God who never disappoints.

When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? For us?