There is something about Advent that reaches into me very deeply. Every year, when it comes around again, I feel it before I can properly explain it. It comes quietly, like a soft stillness settling over my soul, like the first pale light of morning slipping through the dark. And in that quietness, I feel…
Tag: hope
Ink from Pain
I recently joined a writing group that meets at a local church — something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. It’s become one of my favourite outings now, this gathering of minds and hearts, of stories and pens. There’s something grounding about sitting in a quiet room with others who feel compelled to…
We Call on Him
For a number of years, Peter and I shared a quiet ritual with our dear friends, Stephen and his late wife Wendy. We each brought a song — something that spoke to us in that season of life — and took turns playing them, sitting together in conversation, letting the lyrics lead us to places…
Hold on. Hope wins.
On Easter Sunday, there’s a hush in the air that always moves me. The dawn feels quiet and golden, as though the whole world is rising together into the same soft light. Shadows stretch long across the ground, the birds seem louder than usual, and in the Christian calendar it is the day that quietly…
Cancer Diagnosis
I’m the kind of person who remembers anniversaries — not only the joyful ones, but the ones that mark life’s deep turning points. I’ve always been this way. Certain days settle into my bones and refuse to be forgotten. They become quiet markers along the road — places where life changed direction. These moments help…
This World Needs Christmas
There are some stories that don’t fade with time. They settle into the soul and stay there. One of them is the Christmas of 1914. I often try to picture it. Young men far from home, shivering in muddy trenches along the Western Front during World War I. Cold. Exhausted. Surrounded by the constant thunder…
Hurricane Milton
As I sit on a park bench in my local park in Melbourne, the sun rests warmly on my shoulders and everything feels calm. The sky stretches above me in a wide, endless blue. Birds sing from the treetops, and nearby I hear the bright, carefree laughter of my granddaughter as she plays. It is…
My Pink Ribbon Day
After weeks of helping care for my elderly parents, I have been carrying a kind of tiredness that sinks right down into your bones. And yet, this morning, in the very early hours, I found myself wide awake. Melbourne was putting on quite a show outside, with lightning flashing across the sky as a fast-moving…
Good Morning Twenty Twenty-Four
I find myself waking up, or perhaps more truthfully, trying to pull myself into a new year. It feels like a tug-of-war between the sweetness of dreamland, which keeps calling me back, and the quiet desire to get up and savour the very first chai of twenty twenty-four. The temptation to sink deeper into sleep…
Love at First Sip
Allow me to share a little secret with you. Every morning, without fail, I begin my day with a steaming cup of Masala Chai tea, lovingly made and brought to my bedside by my husband, Peter. It is one of the small but deeply cherished pleasures of my life. This is no ordinary cup of…
Apples of Gold 