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My son Adam’s job involves calibrating pharmaceutical instruments. He does all kinds of procedures I don’t understand to all kinds of machines I don’t understand so the gauges read accurately. So the medications we take are produced correctly. So we don’t die.

I can’t imagine why the gauges need all that attention. I mean, once you set them to the standard, shouldn’t they stay put? 

Every mom can close her eyes and visualize the ideal Mother’s Day. 

Older moms envision their kids all together in one place, laughing and enjoying each other in sanctified bliss. Young moms dream of sweet notes from their kids and a few hours of gorgeous solitude with iced coffee in hand. 

Sometimes those dreams come true, and sometimes–Poof!–they disappear in a cloud of pointless arguments or diaper blowouts.

Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus, and Salome were up early. They hadn’t slept much anyway the past two nights–not after Friday when their beloved Jesus, incomprehensibly, had been disgraced and tortured to death on a Roman cross. Like a criminal. Like a curse. A mix of love and horror glued them to the scene, and now the image was burnt in their minds like a nightmare from which they couldn’t wake. Dreams were…

Sometimes we know we are certainly going to drown. 

The waters are roaring, racing in white currents outside their safe limits, their cold spray laughing at us as the surge continues to rise.

Sometimes my prayer times are smooth streams. Words flow easily from my burdened mind to God’s throne, and I feel a real sense of the Holy Spirit. 

Other times, my thoughts are as scattered as a class of preschoolers dismissed to recess. They’re everywhere, in no particular order, running in every direction, and jammed with distraction.