Zach Zarembinski was 18 when he suffered a massive brain bleed during a high school football game, was rushed to Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minn., and placed in a coma. Nine days later, 16-year-old Isabelle Richard arrived at the adjacent children’s hospital on the same campus after a near-fatal car crash left her in a coma.

The older I get, the more I crave a practical spirituality—one tied to dirty dishes not pristine libraries, one that recognizes hungry bellies along with hungry hearts.

The sun was setting by the time we’d reached consensus on our Christmas tree. We’d decided on a cedar that hadn’t been anyone’s first choice—safely neutral, conflict averted.

It was a Monday afternoon in November when Debbie Champeau got the call. The 17-year-old, a senior at St. Pius XI School in Milwaukee, Wis., left school immediately, taking two buses to get home.

There’s something about pumpkins. Lumpy and bumpy, impossibly orange, harbinger of harvest. Instant cheer on a front porch with a hint of moonlit mystery. An invitation to trick-or-treat treaters that later nods to the pilgrims— centerpiece for a table of plenty, symbol of gathering and gratitude.

It began as a low hum on the horizon, barely perceptible. Then a pulsing rhythm rose from the river—the brass and beat of a live band drifting through the humid summer air. The Capitol was coming.

When the chaos rises—the living room buzzing with four kids, piano pounding, guitar strumming, high-speed chases underway—Katie Murray’s eyes land on the “Annunciation” print framed above the couch.

“Don’t give up the ship.” Those five words were the dying command of Captain James Lawrence during the War of 1812. Mortally wounded, he gasped this final order to his crew as the ship slipped into enemy hands. Lawrence didn’t live to see what his words would spark—but his friend, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, did.

As I write this, I am keeping company with a Mama Robin on our backyard balcony, so I’m treading lightly. Tapping, not pounding, the keyboard. Sliding, not slamming, the door. Basking in the breeze.

The journey from a suburban Home Depot to our new country home spanned 11 miles and three helpers, winding over the river and through the woods. In the end, three crabapple trees successfully reached their destination—their trunks, an inch wide, their potential, infinite.

This is the story of a tree. An Eastern Cottonwood soaring 108 feet high, stretching its arms across three yards and anchoring the entire street. It was a defining feature of its St. Paul, Minn., neighborhood near Nativity of Our Lord Parish.

I am a compliment-er by nature. Giving sincere, spontaneous compliments feels as comfortable to me as remarking on the weather—and brings me more joy.

The McConnon sisters needed a trumpet player. The three young women performed in a liturgical ensemble at St. Luke Parish in St. Paul, Minn., and they were seeking a little brass to enhance the upcoming Christmas Eve Mass.

If you’re trying to write a book about quiet and you’re a mom of four, you might need a few extensions on your deadline. Such was the reality for writer Sarah Clarkson, 40, daughter of the acclaimed Christian author Sally Clarkson.