The passage of time is such a curious thing to me. Some days it feels like the seconds take their time ticking by, while at other times, whole weeks or months fly by leaving me winded in their wake. 

This year marks a 20 year anniversary for me - 20 years of leading Vacation Bible School! I distinctly remember that first year in 2006, some of the mistakes I made, and some of the challenging kiddos we had. But I also remember the joy, the fun, the laughter, and even some of the songs! (Those songs are deceptively easy and exceedingly catchy!)

We just wrapped up this year's VBS today with about 80 children and volunteers on the church campus every day. The week went quickly, but not so fast that I forgot to savor a few sweet moments.

Yesterday was an “odds and ends” day. You know the kind of day where one thing after another pulls focus and you do sort of 20-30 minutes on any given thing that really needed about an hour. People, tasks, emails, phone calls – all of these have peppered my days. Thankfully, nothing terrible has cropped up, but each one required a little of my time. 

I don’t love these days, but I don’t mind them either. The variety of things keeps my interest, and the hours move along quickly. But I also never feel like I’ve gotten very much done (and we all know I love a good ‘to do’ list with checkboxes). I managed to get enough done, so it’ll have to do. 

As I write this, I wonder where God was in my day yesterday.

June has swung into view, and it brings us into summer which has a little pressure with it. The pressure is to do something, to enjoy the warmer weather, perhaps even to be more social since it’s “nice outside.” And as someone who spent a decade living in places where sunshine was not as plentiful, I fully understand that urge. 

But I ran across a few things this week that emphasized being present in the moments given to us instead of moving quickly through them and on to the next thing. I’ve given you one in its entirety just below – a Blessing for a Gentle Summer by Kate Bowler – because I think we can all use this kind of blessing these days. 

May used to be one of my favorite months of the year. Spring has come and warmed the earth and air but doesn’t contain the rather more uncomfortable hot temperatures that the summer will undoubtedly bring. 

On some level I still love May, but now it comes with all sorts of “end of the school year” things – concerts, performances, awards, and on and on. Mind you, these are nearly universally delightful things but there are many of them and I tire of them at a certain point. 

Couple all of those extra things that pile into May with the usual run of the mill tasks, errands and activities and it ends up feeling like a treadmill that someone adjusted to 10/10 for me. Even now, I hear the siren call of the grocery store. I’d resist it, but we do still need to eat so I’ll try to squeeze that in between leaving work and picking up the first kid to be done with her school day. 

The other day as I was driving around town, I noticed a large pick-up truck with a lot of lumber stacked in the bed. There appeared to be the usual standard sizes of wood, but there was also a piece that looked somewhat triangular. How curious, I thought, and I wondered what might be built with this wood. 

Later that week, I found myself in a waiting room. After checking in for this appointment, I sat to listen for my name to be called and my eye was drawn to a flash of plastic and thread in the hands of the woman sitting near me. The thread appeared to be fine and the plastic piece she worked with was an odd shape. Curiosity overtook me and I asked what she was doing and what she was making. She told me she was tatting and making lace. I admired her lace and her creativity. She laughed and said it kept her hands busy and helped to pass the time. All the same, I marveled at her creativity. 

It’s Tuesday morning and it is way too early for me to be awake. But my brain has not heeded my silent request to go back to sleep. Instead, it has clicked on for the day and started to think thoughts. I know this is the end of my sleep so I quietly get up, head downstairs, and wonder how tired I will be later. 

After my faithful coffee maker has delivered a hot beverage to me and I am sitting in a chair, I notice that the light changes near the stairwell. There is movement there, and a sleepy 11-year-old girl in her fuzzy robe enters the dim room with me. I put down my coffee, and she comes over to curl up in my lap. She can’t exactly curl up on my lap, though, because she’s only maybe six or eight inches shorter than I am now, so, she sort of squishes next to me in the recliner.

Dear Church Family, 

I must tell you that I am really looking forward to Sunday's Rise Against Hunger event. But I also must confess that the first year we did this event I had no idea what all this was about. Pastor Karl reassured me that it would be great and that I 'd love it. But I wasn't entirely convinced. 

Certainly I understood feeding people - I'm a mother of four and I often joke that Food is my superpower. But the whole part about putting dehydrated vegetables and rice into a bag didn't quite make sense in my brain. I couldn't quite envision it. 

What about the hair nets and gloves?…

There are plenty of mundane tasks to do to get ready for any Sunday, but this coming Sunday is Easter which means there are even more. As I write to you, the copier is humming as it prints out well over 500 pieces of paper that many of you will hold in your hands at the worship services on Good Friday or Easter.

The sanctuary has been stripped of some of the normal color and black has been added for Good Friday. But the Easter flowers wait in the wings for their moment in front. Colored, plastic eggs and goody bags for the kiddos have been assembled. Musicians have been preparing for weeks for this weekend, and Karl has been thinking about the sermon for a little longer than is typical. 

On some mornings, I will do yoga as my exercise, either at in-person yoga class or with a video online. I am not very flexible, but it does help keep my joints moving, and I think it’s good for me to move daily in some way. In most of the classes, the instructor will give a moment for us to “set an intention” for the day’s practice of yoga. 

I love the idea of setting an intention for that specific time, but nearly always my mental response is somewhat cheeky: “my intention is don’t die.” I mean it figuratively - I’m not worried about physical death, I just want to make it through the session. “Don’t die” is my way of saying that I’d like to keep up and not have the movements be too fast or too bendy. Of course, since I’m the one who decided to do the yoga, I usually come up with a truer and less flippant response. 

Sitting in my office now, I can hear a swing from the preschool/day care just across the parking lot. The swing whines a little higher as it goes forward and a little lower as it coasts backward. I don’t know which child is enjoying the swings right now, but I can tell you that it is a fairly constant sound. It’s not annoying in any way, just a small and somewhat distant whine that I can hear if things are quieter in the office. 

I remember loving to swing on the swings as a child. It almost felt like I was flying – what a marvelous thing! Some kids could jump off the swings at just the right time and go sailing through the air and land well. I could not do jump off with any sort of accuracy or grace, but I could swing! 

It’s early as I grab my coffee. I sit down and make my list of things to do today. Making a list always helps me: once the list is on paper, my brain can relax a little since it knows the paper is now responsible for remembering all the things. The list isn’t overly long today so that is nice. 

As I sit at the table making my list, I glance at yesterday’s paper. I find myself reading the headlines and some of the articles. My heart aches at the callousness with which we humans treat each other. My brain is not relaxed any more as I read the ways in which we seem to be inventing new ways to hurt one another. 

In the mornings I get up and make my way to the coffee maker. Once the coffee is in the cup, I add a little creamer and stir with a spoon. I do not select just any spoon in the drawer; I have a favorite spoon for stirring the creamer in. This spoon is slightly smaller than our others and bears the stamp of “Air Malta” on the handle. It helps me perform this minor task perfectly. 

Yesterday morning as I drove to the starting point for my early morning walk, an uncharacteristically thick fog obscured most of my sight. My eyes could not see the stoplights until I was almost upon them. I know the way, though, and I’ve driven it many times before. 

Still, I had to go slower than usual so that I was not further surprised by something appearing out of the fog.  

It is Thursday, December 18, 2025, as I write to you now. This morning, Hazel, our 5^th grader, happily announced the date and that it meant there are only six more days until Christmas. While I intellectually knew that to be true, I had to stop and count to verify such an audacious claim. She was correct – fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective. 

Last Wednesday, I met a woman here at church. She was on her way to a meeting in San Diego and stopped by with the express purpose of picking up the food we had collected for the Border Ministry that takes place just 80 miles to our south. 

When we walked into the choir room, we were greeted by 2 big bins full of rice, beans, canned chicken, tuna and much more! There were several 25-pound bags of rice and beans and boxes with many cans inside. It was a sight, and I wish I’d thought to take a picture. But I suspect you can imagine it: two new, large, red trash cans overflowing with bags of rice and bags of beans with many more large grocery bags on the floor surrounding them. 

I got one of the coffee carts from the kitchen so we could load up faster (and because carrying 25 pound bags around can get tiring!). She was stunned. She said a typical donation from a church is usually a few grocery bags worth of food. But this was delightfully unusual! 

I went to a comedy show on Wednesday evening with my sister, Lisa. I’d never been to one before, never been to a comedy club, and never seen a comedian in person. And – I will admit this just between us – I’ve never even seen a comedy special on TV. I know, I know… there are probably many I could or should watch, but I just haven’t (at least not yet). 

I was out later, way past my bedtime, but it was worth it because we laughed and laughed and laughed! The comedienne was hilarious, and she covered a lot of topical ground – from differences in language in the UK and the USA to relatively pedestrian things like shampoo. And at the end of the night, as we were driving away, I turned to Lisa and said, “I laughed so much my cheeks are hurting now!” Of course, that just made us laugh even more. 

For those of you who know me, it will come as absolutely no surprise that I like to be organized. I consider myself a generally competent person who can get things done. And when other people tell me they see or appreciate my organization or competence, I believe them. By no means am I the most organized (see my often-messy desk) but I do okay by myself and others. 

But this morning, all that self-esteem went flying right out the window. As Hazel and I were talking about an upcoming trip that she and I are taking together to the east coast, I pulled up my calendar on my phone to show her how far away the trip was, when we were leaving, etc. It was then I realized I had booked our return tickets for the wrong day! I double checked it – and yes, to my great dismay, I had purchased tickets for one day later than I thought. 

I was parked on the street near the elementary school, waiting for my youngest. It was a nice day, so I had rolled the windows down which allowed me to overhear the conversation of the kids walking on the sidewalk. One kiddo walking by peered in the passenger side window, curious. His friend asked who was in the car, and his reply was “Oh, it’s just some mom.” 

Now, this is quite true: I am, in fact, a mom. It made me laugh at the time because, for a second grader, that is probably all he needs or cares to know. But it also made me pause. While I am a mother, that doesn’t really give a great picture of who I am. I am a lot of other things, too. 

It has recently struck me that many of us – if not all of us – are carrying more emotional burdens than we make plain to those around us. I think this has always been true, but in the last few weeks, and for whatever reason, the weight of some of these concerns has become more visible to me than it was. 

In worship on September 14, we handed out prayer cards for people to fill out and then bring to the front during the prayer time. Both Pastor Karl and I were surprised at how quickly people in worship got up with their prayers written on the cards. When I took the cards down the following Monday, I sorted through them to see which ones I should include on the prayer email, I was struck at how much heartache was poured out on those cards.

Just about 20 years ago, Greg and I moved back to California from North Carolina. We’d spent 6 years in that lovely state, but after finishing our degrees there (PhD for him from Duke and MSW for me from UNC), we decided that we wanted to be closer to family because we had a baby on the way. 

When we had mostly settled in, we came to church at St. Andrew’s because my dad was the appointed pastor at that time. This decision didn’t involve a lot of thought on my part because my dad had almost always been the pastor at the church I attended (with my 6 years at Duke Chapel being the exception). Of course, we would go to the church where my dad was serving. 

School has started in our area. My own children started school this past Monday and Tuesday with only a modicum of grumbling. With the beginning of school, the shape of our days has begun to transform from the slightly less structured timeline to one with more form as we add in school drop-offs and pick-ups as well as the smattering of extracurriculars they participate in. 

With the return to school, I have been thinking about math – subtraction in particular. It seems to me that many of us are very good at addition but less adept at subtraction.