I said a final farewell to a pair of beloved relatives this week: my father’s identical twin brother, Dave, and his wife, Dorothy. Though they died many months apart, their memorial service waited until relatives could gather. Gather we did, a collection of Neufeld cousins and friends from as close …
“Dear Nana. I’m good. But I’m in love with you. Benjamin.” He wrote that note at around five. His crooked, pencilled letters sprawled across the full eight and an half inch width of paper. I keep it in my Bible to show his future wife, should he marry, that I …
I’ve written about faith and life, home, friends and family in this column for a generation now. Through these five hundred words a week, loyal readers have watched my family (and pets) change and grow. Our daughter has been and done many remarkable things over those years. God arranged that …
While walking one day, my friend encountered someone who had lost control of herself. A mother, shouting and ranting. Her small child stood nearby. My friend felt horrid. She hurt for the young one absorbing her mother’s outburst. Every mother fails sometimes. I certainly have. Perhaps something devastating had momentarily …
My daughter and I once turned on the TV in time to catch the last few minutes of a movie; just enough to grasp the plotline. It featured a pair of lovers – he was sixty, she sixteen. After “The End” slipped slowly off the screen, we sat silent, pondering. …
I entered the church, turned and found my old friend standing just a few feet from me. Until she smiled, I didn’t recognize her. But only one person smiles like that. We hugged, opened our mouths, and started in, just like old times in another church foyer. Back then, we almost …
Like the sweeping arc of a lighthouse beam, illuminating, for one glorious moment, some unutterably lovely scene, a beautiful season of life will soon end for our family. Our six grandbeans can no more race the three hundred steps between their parsonage and our home, the shortest legs pumping …
With the Bean family’s vacation just around the corner, the Preacher and I agreed to care for their sweet, though somewhat reclusive, female cat, Smokey, in their absence. Usually we check in at their house, because Grace (our own feline) has never tolerated other cats. That’s slowly changing, thanks to …
Young love – I remember it well. Heartflutters, crazy mood swings, electric touches, skin on fire and passionate messages transmitted across the room by eye contact alone. We kissed to the Carpenters singing We’ve Only Just Begun during our Saturday morning rendezvous in our college’s least-frequented student lounge. We didn’t …
Most great accomplishments, they say, happen because somebody, somewhere along the line, became angry enough to do something about what made them indignant. But like other explosives, anger requires careful handling and expert managing. Sometimes that means simply shutting up. “I always knew when you were mad,” my daughter Amanda …
