On December 30th, I got the phone call. That phone call. It was my mother, letting me know my father had passed. I sank onto the couch, wind knocked out of me, seismic shift wrenching my soul. Dealing with death is a strange way to enter the New Year. No matter how elderly a loved one is, no matter how many physical challenges they have, no matter how much we realize they are close to the end… death is still a shock. My son Sam described his feelings this way: “It’s like going to a movie with lots of plot twists that never resolve, and then all of a sudden the credits are Continue Reading

Exhausted from the long trip, we pulled up in front of the rental we were moving into. The skies hung low and grey; the ground squished under our feet. Bonners Ferry, Idaho is stunningly beautiful, but we landed there in late November, the bleakest season of the year. The fiery splendor of fall had died, leaving only shriveled brown leaves to be tossed about by chill winds. Even the larches’ gold needles had turned to rust and dropped to the dull forest floor. The landscape waited for winter’s saving grace, a pure white blanket of snow. So far, just bare limbs and cold, grey Continue Reading

It was a fluke, really; an impulsive, tragic, "I'm invincible" kind of thing to do. The energetic nineteen-year-old catapulted himself into a back flip, landed wrong, and snapped his neck. Photo credit: Erik Thorson In the first moments after the accident, Kevin Thorson needed CPR to stay alive. Once he could breathe and talk again, the first words out of his mouth were, "God is so awesome." Kevin is what I call a real Christian. So is every member of the Thorson family. They've walked out an arduous, inspiring faith journey, starting with their refusal to pull the plug on Kevin Continue Reading