To the child we might have had,
You would have been a girl.

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We were floating; rolling over waves in the blue-green Caribbean the night she told me she wanted a baby. I looked at the steeply-pitched red roofs dotting the St. Croix hillside, watched the palm trees dance in the breeze to the rhythm of the sea, then reached over and placed a hand on her suntanned belly.
“Really?” I asked. “Do you think we’re ready?”
“It seems like the right time. Good jobs, good house. If I get pregnant soon, I …

My friend Amy asked me how I could love a God that let so much pain and heartache come my way. I told her I needed to think about that for a while.
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I spent May of 2006 in New York City, and while I was there, I wanted to run away from God. It felt like He had abandoned me, and honestly, I was ready to be done with Him.
Most days, I would go into Washington Square and watch the NYU students sing songs with a hat on the ground …

My favorite part was after the trencher, once it’s loud, vibrating blade finished digging through the earth, and we began to lay the pipes. After the trencher, the world was silent. Even when we were working in a yard like the one that day, near the overpass, things seemed quiet.
This was our third sprinkler installation. Nathan and I worked together at the church I started a year-and-a-half earlier. I hired him to lead the band. Kind of hired him- we paid him $500 a month, when we could. In that …