“What next?” I don’t often start my mornings with such questions on my mind. I often am startled awake before dawn and make a beeline for a programmed coffee pot stirring my senses with steaming hot goodness. My day starts with coffee and prayer. I have a typical spot to settle as I seek the…
Stopping to consider the lessons I’ve learned from my opportunities to travel, my perspective on being an American has changed. I came to realize that I thought was gratitude, was actually a form of pride. Gratitude or pride? I don’t think it was intentional, and at best it was subtle, but this sense of pride…
“All a man’s ways seem right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the motives.” Proverbs 16:2 We plan. We prepare. We shoot our visionary arrows into the future and pray they land at least somewhere near the intended target. But God. He sees. He knows where we have been and where we are…
My father turned 82 today. Two years ago we found out that he was in Stage 4 kidney failure, and he quickly progressed to end-stage, requiring dialysis to survive. While the damage done to his body cannot be reversed, being hooked up to a machine to rid his body of the toxins has prolonged his…
It only took one second. One. My toddler was fussing to get out of the cart, and because I was close to being finished with our little shopping trip, I caved in to the pressure of a 3 year old and let her get out. Holding one little hand in mine while pushing the cart…
Young girls carefully slip the perfectly white gloves onto their little hands, working to fit each finger inside the correct hole. Almost instantly, it seems, they are whisked away to a land of make-believe. Transported to another time and place, they begin to speak in a polite accent, go through the motions of being “proper”,…
I love to read. When I open the cover of a new book, I am filled with a sense of awe–like I am setting out on a new adventure. Turning the page of a book is like opening the door to something yet undiscovered. And then life happens. At some point you have stop, put…
We all have them. Those little things that drive us crazy. They flip our switch and spark a fire. The question is, if we want a happy marriage, how do we respond to those little idiosyncrasies that get under our skin? “If you let them, idiosyncrasies can take the joy out of marriage. Those peculiarities…
When I was young I hated peas. You can ask my Mom and she will tell you that she still remembers me shuffling peas around my plate for what seemed like an hour, trying to make it look like I had actually eaten some of the green balls of goo. While it never bothered me if…
It’s not complicated, really. These three things that seem to have so little in common bring back a flood of memories. Memories can take us back to places we sometimes need to revisit. Maybe it was a time that you learned a lesson the hard way, or maybe it was just an epiphany moment that…
There is always that one thing. You know–that one more thing you needed to do. One more thing you wanted to say. Until you can’t. When it’s too late to turn back, or the moment is lost in oblivion, you have to face the reality that life must go on, and that only God can…
Cheerful. Kind. I know people like that, don’t you? People you just love to be around. People who make you smile and laugh. People you are glad you met. I met a beautiful couple like that just this week and their spirit reminded me of what I want my life to look like. They were not…
Every day you wake up thinking, “maybe today will be the day someone finds her.” Our story is a common one, unfortunately. Looking for a lost dog, we have heard all kinds of stories about beloved pets who decided to journey into the unknown. So I pray. Of course I pray. The creator of the…
It was a small thing, really, but when I swerved my car to avoid hitting it, somehow the image of that upside-down turtle wouldn’t go away. “Turn around.” It wasn’t a big booming voice, but a quiet whisper of reason. My reasons for not turning around went something like this: “You’ll be late–again.” “There’s no…
