Your Spiritual Garden: Tending to the Presence of God book

O garden-dweller, my friends are listening for your voice, let me hear it! – Song of Solomon 8:13 Surprise greeted me this morning, when I was drawn to open the second book I wrote, Your Spiritual Garden: Tending to the Presence of God, and spend time thumbing through the pages.…

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Five Years Later: Remembering “One Mother’s Dream”

The night before my son died, I opened mail, standing in the kitchen. My boy sat at a round table, watching. Soup heated on the stove. I had worked all day, and needed to attend a class later that evening. He had stayed home from high school, sick with the…

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“One Mother’s Dream” … A Foster Adoptive Forever Family Story

“One Mother’s Dream” –Pegge Bernecker (c) For as long as I can remember, I dreamed of holding a baby. When I was a child she was an infant sized doll. If I could sit still, I was allowed to hold my baby sister, then three years later, my brother. In…

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A Dog Teaches Me To Trust Love, Trust Myself

Around ten pm, a few days before Christmas,  I sat cross-legged gazing through the burnished glass of a wood stove. Heat rippled toward my face. Flicking flames evoked emotions and memories: a needlepoint Santa stocking for a boy who no longer lives, the ending of a marriage I held precious,…

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What’s Your Natural Habitat?

I sit facing my computer screen, inches from a large window. My heart thunks. Outside a shadow moves. A moose peers at me. Vividly tall, she is furry, sturdy, six feet away, eyes glued in stillness. Her nose twitches. I catch my breath, meet her gaze. Seconds pass. Does she…

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