My Great Expectations
By the time I post this, our big family-grandson-wedding-get-together should be a thing of the past. Hopefully it will be laced with precious memories. At this stage with kids, grandkids,...
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Anxiety & Fear
66 articles gathered under this theme.
Listening to the Voice of Direction
“You are over the speed limit,” the friendly but slightly mechanical voice says. I smile. She’s my friend, a companion who takes care of a little piece of driving worry. And, I like that...
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What is Our Tower of Babel Today?
When many were saying, “Next thing you know, they’ll be listening to us in our houses,” my dad was carefully picking up the receiver on our wall party line to listen to our neighbors. Eve...
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What’s Good About That Put Down?
I had a little unintended smackdown. Probably well deserved, but still…it kinda stung. And the entire time, I chided myself on one thing. I knew perfectly well that it shouldn’t have both...
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Do You Love Love?
The ring’s been on my finger over 50 years. When he gave it to me, I was afraid it would slide off and I’d lose it because my finger was so slim, so small. It’s kind of grown onto me now....
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Will There Be Peace in the New Year?
When we lived in Italy, going to the American Embassy was always kind of a big deal. We needed to have papers and identification in order. We prepared. Despite our home country’s flag and...
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Certainly There is Uncertainty
“There is certainly a lot of uncertainty,” the television news commentator reported. Well…that pretty much sums up life, doesn’t it? The reporter went on to elaborate on his statement, al...
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God’s Holy Ways Shares Sorrow
There were days, dark and bare. Black and silent. And though those days are mostly past, sometimes even today, when I least expect it, the veil, which holds suffering inside, seems to eva...
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February And Life Snowballs
It’s a snowball of sorts. Little things turn into bigger things, the list of to-do’s explode until there is simply no way to accomplish all of it, and a minor set back becomes a nearly im...
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God is Good Regardless
“Oh Mom. God would be good if there was cancer,” she replied, sitting against the metal slatted headboard of the hospital bed. Her voice held that daughter to mother tone of reproof, and...
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God’s Beauty On The Journey
It’s a crisp November day outside. Up until now the warmth of late summer has hung its hat on Virginia’s autumn. But, fall chill descended last night and the breezy gusts feel polar in co...
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If God Is With Us?
Does it seem at times like the whole world is a powder keg about to blow everything to bits and pieces? Yet, it’s the personal kind of powder kegs, when life feels out of control, that sh...
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The Grieving We Do
I remember the clingers. I can feel those little arms that hugged tight around my neck and the legs circling my body. I remember the process, of disentangling a hand, then a leg, then the...
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And School Begins Again
His big round eyes followed me. His little face filled with confusion, fear, and betrayal. I read his silent plea as if the words had been spoken, “Don’t leave me.” As I turned from the c...
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Do you Worry about What Might Happen?
So, my husband moved the big trash container outside, you know the move-once-a-week hunker on wheels? It’s a job he accomplishes without thinking much about what might or could happen. We...
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Handling Behemoths, Leviathans, and Those Other Monsters of Life
In the shadows of the farmhouse where I grew up, monsters dwelt. They hid in the barn after dark, in the upstairs midnight hallways, and most certainly underneath my bed. Big, hairy, but...
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What Do You HAVE TO Worry About?
There is a lovely little addition behind our house so covered in Virginia woods I didn’t even know it existed until the leaves dropped. The first autumn we lived here, I saw a light from...
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When the Storm is On The Inside
“You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them.” (Psalm 89:9, ESV) There are storms and then there are STORMS. The amount of inner turbulence bothered me over such a...
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Who Knew When We Said “I do?”
My father-in-law used to shake his head and say with a bemused look on his face, “Who knew that someday…,” then he’d finish the sentence with something particular from that season of life...
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Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Ah, Spring. You’ve been a long time coming. The day was perfect as I walked the neighborhood. The depth of the sky’s blue called me. Azaleas bloomed in vibrant bush bouquets. Every bird’s...
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The Rock That’s Higher
There is a rock outside the church we attend. It’s a huge sort of how-in-the-world did that-big-thing-get-there boulder. It shoots out of the ground with no apparent means or logic. Wheth...
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Going Beyond Boundaries
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” -C.S. Lewis, The Lion,...
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What Kind of World Did Jesus Enter?
“And it came to pass in those days” Luke 2:1, “that there went out a decree from Caesar Augstus that all the world should be taxed.” (KJV) What were “those days?” If your feet walked the...
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Do You Like Me?
“Do you like me?” the elder three-year-old asked his little brother. He rolled onto his side and hugged the little body of his two-year-old brother lying beside him. In a world of Faceboo...
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Hope for the Worrier
Recently I wrote a requested article on the subject of worry. It caused me no end of worry. Worry is my middle name. I’ve been put to the test in a crazy worrisome situation in the last f...
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Seven Verses To Remind You God Goes Behind, Before and All Around
I saw them in a lush green park, a family three-some. Sandwiched between mom and dad, a little girl with pudgy legs, light-up shoes and brown pig-tails lifted her legs high. I stopped to...
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We Remember Needed Words At The Right Time
“Remember what I told you,” I said to my little girl with golden hair, long and silky. She tilted her chin upward, her blue eyes fringed in black lashes locked into mine, digging deep, sh...
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Birds, Brains and Semi-Retirement
Our yard is full of psychologically needy birds, and my husband is the reason. For those of you who know this man that God gave me, you must realize he will not grow old like the rest of...
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Mistakes of Grasshoppers and Other Regular People
“We seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.” Numbers 13:33 (ESV) It’s impossible to read about the Israelites’ long exodus from Egypt without being convicted of s...
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Covid Fear is Also Affecting Our Children
Featured recently at Just18Summers.com "It was a Facetime call. I held it up and saw some of the cutest little faces looking at me. “Grandma!” My five-year-old grandson and his three-year...
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Don't Touch
“Uh, uh, uh,” I hear the warning in three short grunts. I turn quickly to find out what my not-quite-two-year-old grandson is doing. My quickness is due first to fear for his safety and s...
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When You Struggle to Understand, Reach for the Light
Dad always wanted lots of light for reading in our old farmhouse. There were never enough and they were never bright enough. I remember well his hand, freckled with age spots as he settle...
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How To Not Drag Old Anxiety Into The New Year
It happens every year. It’s like trying to finish off the Christmas cookies, fudge and eggnog so I can start dieting in January. It’s such a burden. But perhaps none quite so marked as th...
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Storing Ahead
Our first child cried a lot. Understatement. New mom terror of that piercing cry and the absolute certainty it brought reinforced my insecurity. I had no idea what I was doing. In the rar...
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How to Find Peace When You are Unsettled
“So,” she asked, “are you beginning to feel settled yet?” How do I answer that, I wonder? Should I mention we haven’t even carried our furniture up from the basement because first we have...
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Has Anything of True Value Changed?
“Nothing of value has changed,” he said leaning over our daughter. His young face was earnest and sincere. His blue eyes searched to connect with hers, foggy and distant. Day after day an...
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Sorting away the Bad, the Good and the Ugly
“Pick me up,” my grandson says. He reaches little arms high, and his mommy leans down, puts her hands against his solid tiny body. Her brown hair swings forward and covers the smile I kno...
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How Do You Want COVID-19 to End?
The long marble hallway stretched like a tunnel ahead. I remember the wavy lines narrowed to another corridor where doctors and nurses passed like a hospital thoroughfare of workers inten...
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Unsettled Times
I don’t know about you, momma, daddy, grandmama, and granddad, but the last few weeks have fogged my brain and tattered my thinking. If today could be superimposed like tracing paper over...
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The Panic of Going Below the Waves
What would it have been like to reach a hand to Jesus’ shoulder where he slept and shake him awake? We relate well to the waves of Mark 4 splashing into the boat, the wild winds and terri...
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Follow the Rules for Goodness Sake
“No, no, no,” he said. He held his little hand like a stop sign. His voice raised a breathy octave. “Let’s not play it like that, let’s say if you want to move ahead on red, you can.” He...
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Looking Beyond
After a string of long days, it had culminated into the perfect storm. My two-year-old, four-year-old, and seven-year-old each had the issues of a titanic about to sink. All at the same t...
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I Want to Hold You Too
“I want to hold you,” he begged at his mommy’s knee, arms upraised toward her, little toes tipped his almost two-year-old body up and down expectantly. “I want to hold you too,” she said....
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6 Questions That Will Center your New Year
New makes me skittish. While everyone else revels in the thought of a blank-slate New Year ahead, I’ve always anticipated a new beginning with a bit of fear and dread. When others see pos...
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How One Honest Admission invited a Myriad of Support
“So far so good,” I text to a friend when asked how my husband is doing after surgery. The crazy thing is he may be doing ok, but, I am so far from so good. It is a terrifying ride for me...
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My Boy Has Grown Into A Man I No Longer Recognize
I am engrossed in soapy dishes at the sink, my back is turned from the rest of the quiet house when I think I hear something, someone talking. Did I leave the TV on upstairs I wonder? I p...
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Beyond My Borders
The struggle shows in the quiver of a cheek, tremor of lips, and an escaped tear. It comes with a mass of curls shading her face, falling forward with her bowed head. She hides behind its...
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That's What Moms Do
I lay on the couch, one eye open and one shut. An ice cube wrapped inside a damp washcloth balanced on my eyebrow. “I weally sorry, Momma,” he said. His face was level with mine, his eye...
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Have You Opened the Door?
“On Wednesday morning, the first rays of sun were peeking around the clouds,” my daughter Charity wrote. “I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. Strange dizziness clouded my mind. I ha...
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Momma, Is Jesus Here?
“Momma,” he called from the dark bedroom. “Is Jesus here?” “Yes, Justin.” “Ok, don’t worry Mom, we just can’t see Him,” he shouted from his bed. I plopped down on the sofa, letting Justin...
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What to do with your New Year's False Start
They called it the 50 yard dash. I was introduced to it at recess in first grade. I knew I was bad before anyone told me, in fact maybe that’s why I was so pitiful. I knew when we lined o...
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18 Days to Christmas: GOOD SHEPHERD
I’ve often wondered why the good news came first to shepherds. They weren’t influential or powerful. They had a hard time keeping the Sabbath because sheep needed constant protection. She...
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21 Days to Christmas: Deliverer
Christmas commercials, jingles, and reindeer are pleasant interruptions to sour evening news. Current events shine stadium lights on our culture's rampant sin. World rulers add a sense of...
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There Is No Spiritualizing This One
And it came to pass in those days, the wife was harried, and the husband bombarded. Time was ticking like a clock, calendar pages flipped like a fan and a list of one million and two thin...
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Comforting arms of hope rescue from a snarled life
I watch my grandson knee high as he bumps from one trousered pair of legs to another across the crowded room. His vision fills with legs knee high. Unless he looks up, they are like a for...
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Unmoored
Japanese rubbish took over five years to hit our shores after an earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan’s shores in 2011. Everything from house parts to car parts, about 20 million tons...
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Recalibrating Life
Generations, like peanut butter and jelly, are layered lavishly one upon another at the tables. Like a train of blessing, bowls with steam rising and platters overflowing, pass from big h...
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God Goes There
I am into the fear of God. It seems to neon-light itself at me throughout Scripture. People have turned it into an undesirable emotion, but the fear of God is a good thing. The book of Pr...
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When the Troll Sings Russian
My name is Sylvia and I am technophobic. Technology scares the crud out of me. “Hover,” my husband advises. “Just hover and see if it is a good site or one that will eat your computer ali...
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When my seas are stormy
“You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them.” (Psalm 89:9, ESV) There are storms and then there are STORMS. On the scale of 1-10, ten being hurricane level, I rem...
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Shelf Life
For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. I woke up this morning and felt like I’d lasted longer than my shelf life. I’m tired, weary and it is the just the first month of a...
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Strength Clothed
We met in the living room. Two couples. Older and younger. Married and about-to-be. My husband and I, the older and married pair, sat on stuffed tweed chairs across the coffee table from...
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Invisible Me
https://youtu.be/Vv6YnfUfD4U She knelt by the bed as if in prayer, the soles of her pajama footies upturned, her little body in plain sight. A blanket covered her head. In two-year-old lo...
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Perspectives
My perspective has been askew recently, I think. The airplane dips its wing to the right in a slow descent arc above Genoa, Italy. I lean forward and gaze through a tiny oblong window. Be...
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As a Father
As a Father “I can’t fix her,” ragged sobs shook the bed where we slept. For just a moment I thought I was home in Italy again where sometimes the earth trembled, but then I recognized th...
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Eyes Everywhere
My pocket vibrates a split second after Phil’s buzzes. We both reach for our phones, quick on the draw. Our 16-month-old-grandson has the flu and we are anxious. The text reads, “He is so...
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