Patti Richter, On Faith: Fractures, Fault Lines, and a Firm Foundation

Patti Richter, On Faith: Fractures, Fault Lines, and a Firm Foundation

ROCKWALL/HEATH, TX (June 24, 2021) The azalea bushes reached their peak of bloom the week a realtor planted her “For Sale” sign in our yard. The house shouted “ready” too since we’d spent weeks preparing for our move to another home only miles away. Perfect timing—we thought. After driving boxes of kitchen items to the […]

Patti Richter, On Faith: Life Lessons on a Mother’s Love

Patti Richter, On Faith: Life Lessons on a Mother’s Love

ROCKWALL/HEATH, TX (May 6, 2021) Saturday mornings were the worst. My usual routine of dusting each room and dry-mopping the floors grew tedious in the weeks after losing my mother. For over a decade I’d held a phone in one hand and cleaning items in the other while my weekly conversation with Mom made the Saturday […]

Patti Richter, On Faith: Amazing Grace in a Punkerish Place

Patti Richter, On Faith: Amazing Grace in a Punkerish Place

April 2, 2021 – My friend Cindi, in the words of Dr. Seuss, has been in a “terribly prickly place.” Cindi undergoes intermittent treatments for an incurable cancer. During Cindi’s recent round of chemotherapy, her husband suffered an unexpected health crisis of his own and spent a week in the hospital recovering from emergency surgery. While […]

Patti Richer, On Faith: Epiphanies Past and Present, Ready and Waiting

Patti Richer, On Faith: Epiphanies Past and Present, Ready and Waiting

ROCKWALL, TX – February 3, 2021 — The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple. –Psalm 119:130 Holiday lights long after Christmas can be a sign of procrastination. My own late-hanging porch lights are more intentional—their cheerful glow offsets the gloom of long winter nights. However, a neighbor once asked […]

Patti Richter, On Faith: Let the Nation Be Glad

Patti Richter, On Faith: Let the Nation Be Glad

ROCKWALL, TX – Dec. 22, 2020 – In the days after the latest presidential election, with the outcome still uncertain, folks were wringing their hands. As the week dragged by, a large percentage of the populous drooped like Super Bowl attendees wearing the losing colors. There is more at stake in an election than in […]

Patti Richter, On Faith: Night and Day of the Zombies

ROCKWALL, TX – October 8, 2020 — We sat on the floor hugging our knees to our chest for protection, wide-eyed at the scene before us. Several people with the same ghastly appearance stumbled forward— not in living color but in half-dead black and white. That was my first encounter with zombies, when Mom allowed […]

Patti Richter, On Faith: Faithfully Minding Our Ps and Qs

Patti Richter, On Faith: Faithfully Minding Our Ps and Qs

ROCKWALL, TX – August 24, 2020 — The wheels on the bus go round and round after nearly six months of sheltering in place. Two of my grandchildren – sporting colorful new masks – are hopping aboard. Attending school may well become the most notable event of Fall 2020. To open or not to open? […]

Patti Richter, On Faith: To the Mother of the Would-Be Graduate

Patti Richter, On Faith: To the Mother of the Would-Be Graduate

(ROCKWALL, TX — May 5, 2020) Out for a walk one April morning, I stopped to greet a neighbor from a safe, COVID-19 distance. When I inquired about her well-being during these trying days, she burst into tears. Her daughter, she explained, is a high-school senior—was a high-school senior. Everything is upended in their world. […]

It’s Never Too Late: Surprised by Love

It’s Never Too Late: Surprised by Love

He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love. –Song of Solomon 2:4 Heart-shaped chocolate boxes abound for Valentine’s Day, and some can be found even in senior-living communities, though romantic couples are hard to find. But one residential center I have visited was abuzz for months over a pair […]

Shining Brighter in the New Year

Shining Brighter in the New Year

I heaved a sigh of relief as my husband, Jim, pulled a chunk of splintered wood from the palm of my hand. A small piece remained behind, and weeks later, though I couldn’t see it, the splinter still smarted if I touched the right spot. Jim’s own little splinter was more elusive. He’d rubbed one […]