Jennifer Dukes Lee
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The Sound of Love
I was standing at the bathroom mirror, combing through wet locks, when the telephone rang. Jan, a widow from town, had dialed my number. I could hear the sorrow in her quiet “hello.” The men had rung her church’s bell for the very last time, and they were lowering it from the tower. It would never ring here again. She needed to process the [...]
Emptying, Refilling
It’s tough letting her grow big. But there she goes. This mama is stuck here, all spectator-like on life’s bleachers, begging God to make the sun stand still. I’d like one more day of Little, please. It’s not her first date, for crying-out-loud. So what’s with me? It’s just a tooth. Her first tooth fell [...]
So Much.
I open my eyes to see digital numbers cutting through the dark, a steady red in the blackness. The bedroom clock reports that it’s 5:50 a.m., an hour earlier than I usually rise on a dark winter morning. My husband still slumbers. Our blankets rise and fall with each breath. Outside, these farm fields hibernate [...]
A Wood-Carved Valentine
I ask the world’s most obvious question: “All right, who did this?” I jab a finger at the letters carved into the back of the wooden kitchen chair: A N N A. Anna’s older sister chimes in first, rolling her eyes for dramatic effect. “I recognize those backwards Ns anywhere,” she says. Anna’s fork falls with [...]
Living Outside the Box
I’ve heard it said before: “We are human beings, not human doings.” In fact, I’ve pledged to live by that simple mantra a time or twenty. But sometimes, my heart forgets to inform my brain of my good intentions. That’s what had happened that morning, just after the mellow morning sun pooled on my kitchen table. [...]
Finding Christmas
I can pinpoint the exact moment when I stumbled onto Christmas that year. As usual, the moment wasn’t strung in lights or wrapped in shiny paper. I didn’t find it under a prelit tree, or at a big-box store or out on the Information Superhighway. Rather, I found Christmas just off a quiet country road near my [...]
What We’re Waiting For
I kneel on the floor by the old man’s recliner. Sunday afternoon sunlight slants through the nursing home window, warming my back. The old farmer’s red-rimmed eyes shimmer when we talk about the harvest and last Sunday’s Bible readings at our white-steepled church, tucked between two Iowa cornfields. And we talk about Advent, this season of expectant waiting before Christmas, this waiting for Jesus. The old [...]
How to See with Your Ears
We stood in a half-moon around his bed, as the white sheet rose and fell with each slow breath. They say the hearing is the last thing to go, so we gathered bedside to sing an old farmer home. I don’t think the bachelor-farmer would mind me saying that we were part of his family—this ragtag choir of thirtysomethings with [...]
Something to Hold Onto
My mother heard a voice, a weak and shaky voice, calling out to her in the parking lot. Mom was walking out of the grocery store with two plastic bags of ice-cream treats. It was a summer day, and the sun puddled hot on that Minnesota parking lot, where the smell of spruce and asphalt mingled in the muggy air. And somewhere [...]
When the God of the Old Testament Scares You
Jennifer Dukes Lee reminds us of the center of the Bible’s story.
