Ruminate Magazine: Faith in Literature and Art

Stacy Barton

Last night I sat on the living room rug and cried. It was my thirty-fifth birthday, and all I could think was My God, I can’t do this for fifty more years. I walked back through the sleeping house and stood beside each little bed. Lydia suddenly looked long to me, the bones in her face just beginning to widen into girlhood. Across the room, Mary slept with one hand curled beneath her cheek. In the next room, Drew lay in his loft—a chubby little boy with the mind of an ancient cleric, full of words too big for his tiny mouth to say. The baby was asleep next to Jack in our bed, and I stood motionless watching them both breathe gently—in and out, in and out. I counted seventeen breaths, went back into the living roblahom, and let the stillness fill my ears like the rush of an ocean tide.

Jennifer Steensma Hoag was born in Rochester, New York and graduated with her M.F.A. from Rochester Institute of Technology. She has an extensive national exhibition record. Her new series, The Nature of Invasion, addresses our conflicted relationship with animals. She is a professor of Art at Calvin College.