By: Lizzie Joy (Loveland) Nunemaker It took me over a decade of adulthood to learn that love Real love Isn’t polished/perfect hair extending down your back Where you always have the right smart thing to say Where everyone knows you and admires you Where you always look your best and talk like you’re on a…

This morning my two-year-old son woke up crying and grabbed my hand “Mama my belly hurts. Bubba and Mama pray.”  I hold his tiny calloused hand, much stronger and more substantial and nicked up than what I’d imagine an average toddler that doesn’t have to use his hands to move, and we pray, “Lord God,…

By: Lizzie Joy (Loveland) Nunemaker There are kids that grow up in homes that are worse than war zones The things they see are so bad they can’t even speak it —they have to write it on a notecard  Slide it across a therapist’s desk, mine.  We sit in silence I’ve seen too much, heard…

The sky is unblinking. It’s as if all of heaven is sitting across from, incredulous like a mob boss asking, “What do ya really expect?”      The sky: it’s an off-white, a white that has had the tiniest speckle of black gently folded into the paint, making it slightly grey, only noticeable against the snow…

  The verse John 1:5 has been on my mind ever since I found out Teddy had a “mass” on his spine at the 34 week ultrasound. “And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” NKJV “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”…

God, now He’s up to something. I know because it feels like I’m stuck and nothing’s happening. That’s always when He’s the MOST up to something. I can hardly wait to see what He brings. It’s not always an olive branch with a fresh green leaf, sometimes my dove just returns to the boat cooing…

*dictated while driving, finished scribbling on a note on a stationary bike at the gym. And why be angry in this one teetering life when there are now geese flying overhead in perfect aerial formation, knowing instinctively when and where to fly. And then, when the sky is wool-spun navy, and the paper birch trees…

**note, this was written in a few quick moments of throwing Teddy a strand of willow tree and saying “look at this!!” or taking a bath when he napped, or seeing the evening sky when we were playing on the floor and turning my back to write, I added a few lines at the end…

By: Lizzie Joy (loveland) Nunemaker Oh but this world is filled with angry people! I can sit around and knit a yarn for a while, making a nice Afghan wondering what kinds of anger they have against me –I have quite the closet full of Afghans But then one day I put the yarn ball…

Lizzie Joy (Loveland) Nunemaker  I notice Charlie has two orange dots on his canvas of white fur, they glow like seeing sun spots but they are in fact from tiger lillies he had been investigating that decided to leave their pollen as a souvenir A dead field mouse with the sweetest auburn fawn colored fur…