Apples of Gold

The Speed of Change

There are seasons in life when almost nothing seems to change. Days follow one another so faithfully they begin to blur. Morning arrives, evening settles, and tomorrow looks much like today. Life moves along its tracks with a reassuring rhythm. Predictable. Familiar. Safe. In those seasons, change is so subtle it can almost go unnoticed….

Echoed Dreams

She talks about her dreams as if they are already beginning to take shape — a life imagined in bright strokes, full of meaning and promise. There is certainty in her voice, the kind that doesn’t yet know how easily the world can complicate things. I listen, and I am taken back. I remember dreaming…

My Treasure Chest

When I look back, it isn’t the big moments that rise first. It’s the small hands. The weight of a child asleep against my chest. The way time softens when you are watching someone you love grow. Life keeps bringing them to me — first as babies, then as children, then, almost without warning, as…

Allow

There was a time when I believed life moved in straight lines. If I made careful plans, if I worked hard enough, if I loved well enough, things would unfold as expected. I thought certainty was something you earned. But life, it turns out, has never been interested in our neat expectations. It bends. It…

Stay, I Pray You

Last night I saw a musical that quietly undid me. It exceeded every expectation I carried in with me. Anastasia was exquisite — moving, tender, and deeply human. One song in particular stayed with me long after the curtain fell. “How can I desert you?”At eleven years old, I didn’t have the words for this…

Between Breaths

New Year’s Eve is the night when time asks us to look back. Not with nostalgia, but with honesty. It is not a celebration so much as a reckoning — an inventory of moments that never asked to be remembered but stayed anyway. The conversations that altered us. The silences that taught us more than…

Quiet Reflection

When I was younger, the days between Christmas and New Year felt almost sacred. A quiet pause in the calendar where I would reflect on what had been and carefully map out what was to come. Lists were written, intentions set, dreams neatly arranged as though life itself might follow my handwriting. I still return…

Forever in My Heart

On your day of independence, my beautiful Finland,my heart turns to you with both pride and sorrow. What a tremendous price has been paid for your freedom.Your independence did not arrive wrapped in celebration—it was carved out of hardship, sacrifice, and the courageof those who had so little, yet gave everything. I think of my…

In the Stillness

There are nights when exhaustion settles into my bones, yet sleep refuses to come. And it always seems to happen at the most inconvenient times — like now, when Christmas is just around the corner. A season that sparkles once a year, bringing light, joy, and that familiar warmth I usually cherish. But life doesn’t…

The Beauty of Advent

There is a unique beauty in Advent, a quietness that settles over the heart like soft morning light. It is a season that invites us to slow down, and to make room again for hope. While the world around us begins to rush, Advent whispers a different rhythm — one of waiting, watching, and listening….