Sometimes the hardest part of caring for someone is accepting that we cannot make them better, while recognising that we can still make a difference in their days. There is a grief that comes with watching a parent fade that is almost impossible to explain unless you have lived it. It is the grief of…
Tag: love
Books and Roses
Perhaps the most meaningful way to challenge expectations is not through rebellion, but through the quiet confidence of being ourselves. My two grandfathers were not exactly what you would call traditional men, even though both were born in the early 1900s. My father’s father loved cooking, baking, and cleaning. Domestic work came naturally to him….
Dad’s Fading Light
Perhaps some of life’s deepest sorrows are inseparable from its greatest blessings. My 90-year-old dad is slowly slipping away. Day by day, the flame in his candle grows dimmer, and I find myself watching that light with a grief too deep for words. There is something so heartbreaking about loving someone for your whole life…
The Waiting Heart
There are stories we carry for years before life gives us the experience to understand them. On Sunday night, I found myself waiting for my seventeen-year-old grandson to arrive. He was making his own way from home to our place, travelling more than one hundred kilometres from door to door. I had a warm meal…
Love Like That
The deepest response to extraordinary love is to let it transform our lives. The cross is a hard thing to look at. It is rough wood. Cruel wood. A place of suffering and shame, where human beings were nailed and left to die. There is nothing gentle about it. Nothing soft. Nothing in the scene…
Love Kneels Down
Sometimes the most ordinary acts of service carry the most extraordinary love. On Maundy Thursday, I find myself deeply moved by the thought that love kneels. Not proud.Not distant.Not hurried.But low enough to wash feet.Low enough to serve.Low enough to remain tender, even with suffering already gathering at the door. There is something about that…
Water over Rock
We are constantly being shaped by what we repeatedly allow into our hearts and minds, often without realising it. There are some places that seem to hold a feeling for you, so that when you return, something in you settles before you even understand why. Marysville is like that for me. This summer, on one…
My Treasure Chest
Watching a child grow up is a gift. Being invited to continue knowing them as adults is another. 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….
The Silent Clock
As we grow older, the years behind us do not disappear; they become part of who we are. Where do the years go? They slip through our hands so quietly, and yet they do not disappear. They live on within us, just beneath the surface, waiting for the smallest thing to bring them back. A…
Next To You
As love deepens, excitement can soften into something quieter: the feeling of being safe with one another. Yesterday was one of those days that start normally but end with your heart in your throat. My elderly dad had a fall. It ended well, thank God, but at the time it was frightening. The ambulance came,…
