The Unity of the Brothers
“Brothers!” my youngest grandson shouts. “Hey, Brothers.” And my heart melts just a little. His two older brothers wrestle with each other at the round kitchen table. Laughing, shoving, a...
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Family & Marriage
244 articles gathered under this theme.
How Can We See Clearly In A Blurred World?
My husband and I hurried through the airport , to make our connection while dodging and squeezing between other fliers and their bags. It was the last leg of our flight back home and we m...
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Passing Down the Fatherhood Mantel
We’ve sailed past Father’s Day on our calendars. Some, like me, remembered fondly those blood lines that brought physical life. Others tried to forget, and still others celebrated men tha...
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When God Has Other Plans
“Then the Lord said to Moses, “Tell the people of Israel to turn back and encamp in front of Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, in front of Baal-zephon; you shall encamp facing it,...
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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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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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Unprompted Words From the Heart
“I love you, Grandpa and Grandma,” my twenty-year-old grandson said before he ended our phone conversation. He is about to turn the ripe old age of twenty-one and will be married in less...
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The Day Mom Forgot Me
I’m a mom. I know the tug of the umbilical cord from birth until giving each baby away to love and cherish another. I’m a grandma, and I recognize the family units that must even take pre...
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The Measure of My Days
I hold one end of the measuring tape while my husband walks backward. The metal unwinds until he reaches the spot he wants marked. His thumb stops at the line and he bends the tape toward...
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Beautiful Language Indwells the Believer
When my daughters were teenagers growing up in Italy, a group of American high schoolers asked them for Italian swear words they could use. My bilingual daughters, were unfortunately accu...
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Is Loneliness A Mercy?
“Ain’t no man that good,” I quipped. Everyone feels lonely at times. Truly good friends are rare and precious. I have book friends. Gym friends. Writing friends. Bible study friends. Hobb...
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Has Truth Stumbled in the Public Squares?
A steaming cup of coffee warmed my hands. My husband lifted his tiny Italian espresso cup in salute. Outside the patio doors, cement like layers of snow-ice, shone so bright, we squinted...
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Holding True Today Prepares Us For Tomorrow
“Just do what’s right today,” my husband’s voice said into my ear. The cell phone pressed hard against me, as if the very pressure could somehow put his words into my being. But doing rig...
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The Family Tree Before the Manger
Growing up we called it the “Mennonite game.” Within a short span of meeting someone new, we somehow managed to find a connecting relative within a massive tangle of roots. When one of ou...
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From Uprooting to Belonging: How the Birth of a Savior Changes Everything.
An angel appeared. A virgin conceived. Thousands of miles away a ruler declared a census. Like a drum roll of Sovereign timing and unstoppable happenings, the wheels of prophecy turned. W...
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Is Your Accent On the Right Thing?
When we moved into a tiny Italian village, we gained immediate notoriety as, The American Family. In fact, we were the only Americans in the area. We were an anomaly. I could feel the ten...
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The Smell Under the Kitchen Sink
One potato, two potatoes, three potatoes, four… The smell started as a vague drift of unpleasantness. But as I cleaned off the counter, a sniff of something not quite right remained. Afte...
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“Did God Save Us To Let Us Starve?”
“Did God save us to let us starve?” I may not have said it quite like the complaining Old Testament Israelites are recorded after their exodus from Egypt, but I may have had that very sam...
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Does God See Us Where We Are?
“I don’t know where we’re at,” Phil’s dad used to say from the front seat of his handicapped van. In his later days my father-in-law, sweet and intelligent seemed to live in an anxious st...
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Hold On To Great Treasure
It had been an overlap day, when one commitment led to another with hardly a breath in between. Three grandsons sped through their home kitchen where I tried to do some cleaning up after...
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What Is Your Calling?
A friend recently phoned me and began our conversation with, “Are you bored now that you are retired?” My four children are in various throes of raising our grandchildren. I watch them an...
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What Does It Mean to be Found?
I’m not good with directions. I never could find where we were on that big paper Rand McNally map, so when the first GPS came out, I considered it to be a marriage saver. Until I realized...
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Are You At Home with Your Passport?
I checked again to make sure the blue passport lay in my palm. Lines of weary travelers stretched long behind and in front of us. In tightly clasped fists, passports of green, maroon, and...
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Set Apart To Be A Blessing
Pacing from streetlight to streetlight, with my phone pressed hard against my ear, I wore a circled path on the asphalt. My head down, my feet entered the illumined cone shaped area on th...
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Call Me Sis Again
“Hey Sis,” she said to get my attention in the store. She was more than double my age with white hair. She looked like my grandma. “Mom,” I hissed, “don’t call me Sis,” I always wanted a...
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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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Are You Eating Solid Food or Milk?
“Eat your peas and carrots,” turned out to be a big order for one of our daughters. Solid food, that big step of introducing all manner of foreign texture and flavor into a baby’s mouth w...
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He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not
“Are you being married?" our then four-year-old grandson asked. His whole body shoved forward to fit into a space in-between my husband and myself’s quick hug in the chaos of a kitchen sw...
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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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Who Wants the China?
We sat in the old farmhouse dining room, around the table where my mom had hosted generations of family. And we divvied up the old pictures, bits and pieces of written history, and trinke...
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What Do You Do?
Somewhere in the middle of dodge ball tag and baking cookies with three grandsons, my youngest grandson cocked his head to the side and asked, “So Grandma, what do you two do here all day...
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Open Hearts Find Room For Jesus
The slammed door echoed into the hallway and shocked the kitchen. Probably every teenager has managed a few. Ours did. And, although door slams were outlawed, the ugly secret was that I w...
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A Baby Brings Hope And A Future
Mornings have always been a process for me, like pulling me out of a deep well where my feet are sucked by muddy weights of dreams. Greeting each new day takes time and a dose of courage...
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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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What Pillars Do We Stand On Today?
It’s Wednesday morning. I am writing this blog five days before November 5. Election Day, 2024. Likely, a winner will have been decided when it pops up in your email or feed. Your world w...
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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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Do You Feel Like a Nobody?
I heard the door open and my husband’s heavy footsteps slowly ascend the steps. “Hi Honey,” I greeted at the top. “How’d it go?” We were young with a newborn in a new city, new apartment,...
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Jesus Meets Us Where We Are
It was back in the day of big over the lap Rand McNally Maps. One lay across my legs while I sat shotgun on the front bench seat of our 1966 Chevy Impala. Across the two big pages, lines...
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We Laugh and We Cry
The words stop me when I come across them, … “the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people…” They make me pause and close my eyes...
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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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Ode to the Nine Foot Tomato Plant
Oh tomato plant that towers many feet above my head. Where is your fruit? I grew up on a farm in Kansas, and at the risk of embarrassing all my Kansas friends and relatives who put into c...
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Are You Thick Skinned but Thin Hearted?
“Gotta be thick-skinned to survive ministry,” advised a pastor to my young husband. “I’d never have continued if I’d let every criticism get under my skin.” As a pastor’s wife and mother,...
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Peter, Cornelius and a God Who Sees All
My husband is a fan of split screens and simulcasts. The more the merrier. One corner of the TV can play a football game, while the opposite corner shows something completely different. T...
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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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It’s Our 50th Wedding Anniversary
“He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it.” (1 Thessalonians 5:24 NKJV) 50. The Big 5-0. 5 Decades. A Half Century. As a bride, I had no idea. I thought people who had been marri...
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Safely Shadowed Under His Wings
A shadow, long and wide, interrupted the sunshine for just a moment and then glided over the bright green foliage. My grandson and I squinted into the blue above us. We saw the outstretch...
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Am I Still Your Favorite Mother?
You were at boarding school and we were six hours from you in our ministry. Our first and oldest to fly from home, you seemed far too young, and we felt so unready. But, the label “Missio...
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Demolition Day is Like Party Time
If you are a fan of home improvement networks like I am, you are well acquainted with the satisfaction some people get from Demolition Day. It’s like party time. However, although I enjoy...
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God Moves Behind the Scenes
We all have them, markers of good and bad in our lives. April marks our spot. It’s another anniversary of when life altered through our daughter’s illness. I often wish I could box up our...
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God’s Light Pierces the Darkest Grief
Our last few weeks have been ones of weeping with those who weep as we’ve watched dear friends mourn the loss of a beloved son. Yet, they have also been days of seeing glimpses of pure gl...
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Nothing Can Eclipse God’s Glory
In August of 2017 an eclipse marked our path in Kansas City, Missouri, where we lived. I wrote about it on a blog then. Today, we live in Virginia, not smack in the center, but still near...
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God Never Needs Updating
“It needs an update,” my husband says. He wasn’t talking about me, which is a good thing. For us both. Phones, computers, thermostats, security systems, clocks, TV's, GPS systems. I mean...
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Was It All A Waste?
It broke my heart and stole my resolve. As a writer, rejects come. It’s kind of part of the whole deal, it happens and though difficult, it usually helps me grow. But this email rejection...
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We’ve Got Each Other
“Was it Ross?” “No that’s not right,” he shook his head. “Richard?” “Maybe we ought to take some of that stuff they advertise on T.V.,” my husband mused when both of us together couldn’t...
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How Mature Are You?
“Who do you want to be when you grow up?” I used to ask our kids. I liked to hear all the ideas. Their aspirations swung wildly. Everything had its season, from astronaut on Mars, to arch...
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Can God's Children Trust God's Gifts?
How is it that a man who hates shopping finds some unexplainable driving challenge in riffling through one bottomless brown bin after another? I watch the man I thought I knew so well, be...
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How Do You See People?
I tilt my head a bit to look for myself in his stick figure drawing. I wonder is this truly how he sees me? He waits. “Is that me?” I ask. Pen in hand, like Picasso, he nods. Proudly. Ser...
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You Are Not Invisible to God
I heard the bang of a metal door next to me before I leaned down for that “underneath” the gas-station-bathroom-stall search. In my bent over rectangular view, two thick-soled black shoes...
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Now What?
Have you ever hit a fork in life when you have asked, “Now what?” You might be thinking of the last time you put together a 1,2,3 step project out of the box. Only it didn’t turn out so s...
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Prayer Leaves An Eternal Legacy
On the farm, after dark meant black. The only light, other than the stars, shone from a tall pole smack in the middle of the yard. I ran from the gray shed to the house like lightening, s...
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How Old Are You?
“How old are you?” my grandson asks again. It’s a regular question which I try to regularly dodge. “How old do you think I am?” I ask back. His little forehead wrinkles as his eyebrows dr...
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Who Are Your Wise Guys?
Calling all wise guys. Only what if they aren’t? Remember that old advertisement, “let your fingers do the walking?” It promoted a thing once upon a time called the yellow pages, which wa...
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Kings, Prophets, and You
If I say, “Micaiah,” what comes to your mind? Nothing you say? Well good. But, I hope you never say that again after you read this post. Let’s just start with: Incredible Bravery. Immovab...
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Who Do You Trust?
“Ahh! Salaam and good evening to you, worthy friend. Please, please, come closer,” our tween-aged daughter motioned with her hand. From the movie Aladdin, she knew every word, every gestu...
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When you are powerless how should you respond?
Welcome to this guest post from my husband Philip Schroeder. One of the transformers serving the office building where I worked blew. There was no power in most of the building, including...
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Pondering What Are The Chances?
This morning I chanced to look out my bedroom window. Water splashed up from the little “pond” in our back yard, as if a fish slapped its surface. A water feature which worked once upon a...
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I Wish My Kids Had Known My Mom Like I Did
I wish my kids had known her better, the woman I called Mom. I would like to have them remember how her hands flew over the piano keys, and see the line of piano students that came to the...
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The Blame Game
Today my best friend is writing a guest post. He’s been around since high school, and I’m honored to have been married to him for almost 49 years. You may not realize how much Phil alread...
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Incomprehensible Faith
It is often the incomprehensible pieces about God and His Word that bring us back to the rudiments of our faith. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things no...
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Are You Walking In the Mire?
Mud, thick red goop clumped his little shoes like melted cheese oozing out of a sandwich. Hunks of it fell in globs I tried to avoid as I scooped him up. Briefly his legs swung from side...
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Red Hearts, Chocolates, and Five Bible Verses About God’s Love
Growing up my bedroom faced a dirt road. A small gravel circular drive half-mooned just feet in front of my window. I watched the mail man drive up in a cloud of dust. He was as punctual...
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Is It Too Difficult For God?
“I am so ready for an angel to come,” Phil said that morning. I’d been thinking the same. I got up from my cot next to our daughter’s bed and joined my husband where he stood at her side....
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Hold Tight, Keep Your Balance and Watch Out for Mud Puddles
“The steps of a man are established by the Lord, when he delights in his way; though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for the Lord upholds his hand.” Psalm 37: 23-24 ESV One tiny h...
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This Isn’t What I Asked For!
This past Christmas might have confirmed what we knew all along. Many of the things we want most don’t come wrapped in beautiful packages. While holidays wind down and stores fill with re...
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Christmas Greetings to Your Home from Our Home
“And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.” Luke 2:7 KJV May your Christmas b...
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Our Fancy Aluminum Tree
I grew up with a silver aluminum tree. There will be those who respond to that fact with pity. There will be others for whom an indescribable nostalgia sweeps through from head to toe. Ou...
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Chosen Isn’t So Special if You Are a Turkey
My kids used to say I should write a how-to-hide-the-turkey-recipe book. We ate a lot of turkey when we lived in Italy. Affordable and easily available, I disguised wings, thighs and brea...
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Is The World Getting Better or Worse?
As a kid in grade school I often heard a debate about whether the world was getting better or not. “Better,” my teachers said. “Better,” my T.V. screen told me. “Worse,” my parents said....
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Grateful for the Baby We Never Knew
“How do you feel?” My husband’s voice asked through the anesthesia. My hand moved heavily to the spot where a baby had grown. “Empty,” I whispered. He scooped my tear before it hit the pi...
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What Are You Wearing Today?
My husband wakes up every morning and makes a decision. “What class clothing is this day?” What he does during the day determines what he wears. When he used to go into an office, the dec...
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Are We There Yet? Finding Purpose in the Miles
“Are we there yet?” little voices once asked from the back seat. Years slipped by, like miles passing underneath. Complaints changed, the questions grew more sophisticated, and the voices...
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It’s Back to School and God Is Still Faithful
A bit of a ruckus in Aisle Four grabs my attention. Stacks of bright notebooks and bins of colored pens separate me from a young father trying desperately to check off the teacher’s list...
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How to Activate Triple A When You Need Help from God
Today I’m delighted to introduce you to Jeannie Waters. Besides being an accomplished writer, she is always ready to help and encourage me in my own writing journey. Jeannie is an award-w...
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What’s in Your Suitcase? - Three Treasures to Pack and Three Attitudes to Leave Behind
Do you go on vacation with more than just what’s in your suitcase? This week you’ll find me at https://www.jeanniewaters.com/blog/. Today it’s my privilege to be Jeannie’s guest blogger....
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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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Is God Unjust?
This year as Father’s Day approaches I am so aware of the attack on the family, on the role of Fathers, and disengagement and disrespect placed on family in society. It’s complicated by p...
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What Will You Find In the Darkest Tightest Folds of Your Soul?
When my husband and I travelled to visit-and hopefully encourage-global workers around the world, I confess, some countries got more prayer than others. The prayers usually had to do more...
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To Share or Not to Share
Have you ever wondered what to share, how to share or even if you should share something? I have. We see this paradox in Asaph. He authored Psalm 73 with a conflicted heart. He admits to...
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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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The Biggest Reunion
“…looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne o...
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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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Enviable Comparable Endings
Asaph, King David’s talented musician had issues. He agonized over life’s inequality and unfairness and fell prey to a common problem. “For I was envious of the boastful, when I saw the p...
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We Found the Wild Life
“Is there wildlife?” she asked over the phone. After moving from the midwest where deer and antelope play and seldom is heard a discouraging word, I paused just a moment to consider. Well...
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Where’s The Free Lunch?
“TANSTAAFL,” the text read. That crazy duck quack my husband has on his phone announcing incoming texts sometimes drives me crazy. At almost 1:00 a.m., it’s enough for a heart attack. “Wh...
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What’s Your Power Source for the Storms of Life?
“We are ill prepared for living here,” I told my husband on the third day of a power outage. He’d been shoveling the driveway, bringing wood into the fireplace and fire burning stove, and...
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What Are Your gods of 2022?
“And when the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord. So they took Dagon and put him back in his place.”...
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Are You Feeling In-Between?
The last week of December always feels a little like an in-between to me. It’s between holidays, months and years. Akin to adolescent years, somewhere between child and teenager, life has...
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New Birth’s First Breath
In the sweat and grime of one contraction bursting upon another, I concentrated on a child yet unknown, but one already knit with my own heart. Birth in that moment was all about bringing...
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I Fell in Love with American Thanksgiving While Living In Another Country
I learned to really appreciate this American tradition in a place where it was not celebrated. Our first years we felt alone without family. We joined with fellow North Americans, friends...
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How Was Your Day?
One of our grandson’s started first grade this year. He is the first of our son and daughter-in-law’s children to begin first grade. It is a shell shocking experience for all parents. And...
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The Prayer Stump
My husband chiseled out what he calls a prayer stump from the trunk of a fallen tree. Its back behind our house where he is hidden from human eyes. It’s an uncomfortable seat, an earthly...
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Going Home
The scenery changes outside my window. From tree covered mountains to patchwork plains. I’m going home, although I’m not even sure where that is anymore. I’ve called so many places home....
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Becoming is a Journey
From the back of the car, three kids sang with megaphone voices. “Do everything without complaining, do everything without arguing, so that you will become blameless and pure, children of...
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Standing on the Other Side of the Line
Landing on Italian soil in 1982 The first time I boarded a plane for Italy, I left with one husband, 24 suitcases, a child on each hip, one holding her daddy’s hand and the absolute assur...
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Do You Know Where You’re At?
“I don’t know where we’re at,” Phil’s dad used to say from the front seat of his handicapped van. In his later days my father-in-law, sweet and intelligent seemed to live in an anxious st...
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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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Who is in Control Of Generations?
“He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children,” Ps. 78:5 ESV “Who’s in control here?” I asked the mirror mi...
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What My MisMatched Shoes Taught Me About God
I wore mismatched shoes to the Doctor today. It’s taken us a year with the COVID backup and restrictions to establish a base doctor in our new town. I finally had my first visit after mon...
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Is the Devil Really in the Details?
“The devil is in the details.” I’ve often seen the validity of that phrase in politics. It makes perfect sense when reading the small print at the bottom of a contract, or if one is faced...
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Recognizing You on Father’s Day Even Though Your Hair Is Gray
“I didn’t recognize that gray haired man,” my husband and I squinted together at the photo on his camera’s screen. I saw him immediately in the group picture. He wasn’t so ready to claim...
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Going Beyond Clouds That Hide the View
I’m a cloudy kind of person. Something in my soul shuts out the light inside me like clouds that hide the view. But when the shadow passes suddenly it’s as if the glory of the sun explode...
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Catching Up with Life
My mother-in-law, Esther Kangas Schroeder went to be with Jesus last night. Life has a way of spilling one thing onto another, and stuff can end in a big heap. Yes, even for almost-retire...
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Little Boys, Escape Artists and Cunning Hearts
We have an escape artist in our family. The kind that scales double safety gates across the stairway, the type who climbs out a crib in a sleep sack, through open windows and sneaks out l...
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When Mom Forgot Me
“Where do you live?” she asked. Wind whipped her white curls into a crown around her head against a blur of golden wheat fields as we sailed along the dirt road. I glanced her way. She sa...
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Slow Food, Fast Food. What’s Your Spiritual Palate’s Recipe?
“How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” Psalm 119:103 ESV When fast food started flipping burgers in Italy, it raised a commotion. Protests and picketers l...
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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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Should the Church Put Up With It?
Do you know where the term “green with envy” stems from? Shakespeare is credited with the English idiom in Othello. Before he came along to make it popular, the Greeks are thought to have...
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What’s Wrong With Grandpa?
When I think of my grandchildren, there is a sweet glow in my mind of happy holding-on-the-lap book reading, coloring pictures together or baking cookies. Quiet blissfulness. Togetherness...
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We Were So Alike Until We Got Married
(This post may have a familiar ring to it. You may have read it on the first go around Feb. 14, 2017, but it’s especially appropriate for a revisit before Valentine’s Day sneaks up on you...
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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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Do You Know How to Define Your Terms?
“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” -Bill Clinton. Every time my husband and I round a particular corner, political signs crop into our sight like spring tulips. The law...
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What impact will my life have in the future
My husband has a carpenter’s chalk line. He rolls it out, squints down its straight line and lifts it slightly between thick fingers, then lets it snap. It leaves a distinct chalk line ma...
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How to Build a House that Speaks the Right Things
“For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.” 1 Cor. 3:9 (NIV) “A house tells a lot about the person who lived in it,” my husband, the carpenter mumbled....
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I'm Proud of You Son
“You’re never too old to want your dad to be proud of you,” my husband stated the other night as we both collapsed into bed, tired from a day of hard work. Those poignant words took me im...
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Make Sure You Accent the Right Thing
It was a tiny village, not much more than an intersection with a few stores. When we moved into the area, the only American family in Magazzino, Italy, we gained immediate notoriety. I co...
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Cutting Your Husband’s Food and Other Friendly Tasks
So, I cut his roast chicken. Into little square edibles. When I looked up, he wore a puzzled expression, a little worried but seriously amused. I drew my eyes back down to where mangled b...
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Kept at Home Faith is Easy to Hide
Her name was Candy. I couldn’t describe her if I had to. I never knew the color of her hair, the width of her smile or touch of her hand. Because she didn’t exist. Yet, every meal time fo...
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Home Is A Lot More Than What Fits In A Truck
There’s a U-haul behind us. I will be home someday, and when I am, the U-haul’s not coming. We’ve been planning this move for a long time, still I feel like it snuck up on me. The details...
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I Will Be a Father to You
She sat on my daughter’s bed, bent forward and fumbling with the gadget on her lap, a thin white line connected it to her ear. Even though I stood across the room, I could hear the music...
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So You Want To Be Clean?
A round robin family letter, the kind meant to keep families connected in normal times when coronavirus has nothing to do with being apart pops up in our inbox several times a year. Cousi...
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Whatever Makes Them Happy Isn't the Answer
“The things I do for my kids,” I thought with a half-eaten Big Mac in one gloved hand and piece of wilted lettuce in the other. “But this tops them all.” I stood on a stool leaning into a...
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Who Really Has the Power to Fix It?
I know well my husband’s furrowed brow. I am well acquainted with the set of his jaw and the far away focus of his eyes. His spinning thoughts, the ones that talk louder inside him than s...
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God Does Not Social Distance Us
Last night I dreamed I was in a crowd of people in a store. We were pressed together in a small space and I knew I was too close. Too near. I woke up wound tight like a mummy and with a h...
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Five Lessons from Momma
1. What you criticize in others, you likely do yourself. Momma took the lesson a step farther. What you criticize in others you probably are aware of because it’s something you already do...
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It’s An Odd Time in the Fog of Covid-19
It’s an odd time to sell a house. It’s an odd time to move. It’s an odd time. Boxes scatter the floor and emptiness echoes off the walls of the only house we’ve ever owned. Outside a For...
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But What if God Doesn’t Do What I Ask?
How is your, “But even if He does not” faith? My husband, Phil, and I have been reading some of those New Testament verses that beg childlike faith. Verses like, “if you ask me anything i...
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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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What a Thorn Patch Teaches About Marriage
Anybody who grew up barefoot on a Kansas farm knows about stickers. A flat lying torture-in-waiting plant with seeds like tiny wooden barbs. They spread viciously, looking for tender skin...
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Even Bathroom Stops are Wonderful in the Eyes of a Child
I heard the truck-stop bathroom door squeak open from my perch inside the painted wooden stall. “Oh Momma!” A little voice said full of wonder. “It’s pink.” Pink was an understatement. It...
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All for Jesus. Sorta. Kinda. Well Almost.
Here they come again. Younger each year, or maybe I’m just older. They come with their finger on a map and feet pointed forward, eager to go anywhere and do anything for Jesus. Men and wo...
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Clean Slates of Possibilities or Endless Piles of Heaviness
Sheets of frozen white driven by cutting wind kept my snow-loving son indoors. By late afternoon, the worst moved past. Glittering flecks blew from drift to drift, tiny razor shards of sn...
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If You Aim at Nothing are You Really Bound to Hit It?
In the month of January, when people sit down with year planners and good intentions, I realize, I’m not a great goal setter. I don’t like to see on black and white what I’ve kept locked...
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What if the Light at the End of the Tunnel is Just More Tunnel?
-Guest post by Charity George Too often I wait till I’ve reached the light at the end of the tunnel, to be thankful. “Thank you that those test results turned out good.” “Thank you that t...
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How to Kill a Thankful Heart
I did it again. I took out my measuring tape and measured. It wasn’t the dainty kind I carry in my purse and embarrass my husband with, or the big black one pocketed in his tool belt hang...
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Those moments no one sees
It was in a moment when the house was quiet, the girls at school and my husband at work that the little blue sleeper called my name again. The sun’s bright rays bleached my vision and I s...
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Cutting Your Husband’s Food and Other Friendly Tasks
So, I cut his roast chicken. Into little square edibles. When I looked up, he wore a puzzled expression, a little worried but seriously amused. I drew my eyes back down to where mangled b...
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Getting Out of the "Every-Day-is-Labor-Day" Cycle
“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28-30 NKJV) Typically on the farm, Labor Day meant a day to labor, another of many laboring days...
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The Armor, Your Battle and His War
They come, a little bewildered, some heralding children yapping at their ankles and running in circles, some almost newlyweds with blank-slate futures while others brave it alone. Obedien...
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You Don’t Want to Tear Down That Wall
“First,” my husband said listening to my remodeling ideas, “I need to see if it’s a load bearing wall.” My face fell like a house made of cards. In the back of my mind, from the day we pu...
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What’s Hiding in the Window of your Soul?
Recently our family, kids, spouses and grandkids got together at an airbnb for three days of togetherness. It took the form of lots of games, food, and hours of conversation. Kids ran thr...
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He Gave Himself Up for Another
Before the carpenter’s sawdust brushed off, before the wood glue dried, before the grout hardened, the guy I married had to learn a new skill, the pregnant husband trade. Married four sho...
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When Clouds Hide the View
I’m a cloudy kind of person. Sometimes something in my soul shuts out the light and then the cloud passes and suddenly it’s as if the glory of the sun explodes inside of me and everything...
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BC and AD of Charity
I tend to separate my life into BC (before Charity's illness) and AD (After the Destruction) of Charity's physical body. Those categories can also stand for Before Children and After Daug...
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Leavening the Whole Lump
Flour frosted the kitchen like snow. A flour bin, a half-empty bottle of vegetable oil, and baking pans fought for territory on my counter. Little fingers thick with dough punched and kne...
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Where Do the Prayers of a Mom Go?
“No rest for the weary,” mom sighed. She bent down to pick up muddy boots and move them off the kitchen floor where they lay on their rubber sides, shells without spirits. She carried the...
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Till Kids Do Us Part
Okay, so it’s possible I don’t like her child. That friend who’s been a friend for as long as I can remember, the one who dried my tears after break ups and sad movies, the friend who kne...
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Where Common Sense Meets Brains
“Ain’t got the brains God gave a goose,” Dad muttered, shaking his head. He sat in his chair in front of the big old Zenith. Encased in a piece of furniture that fit the previous TV, the...
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What the Fig Leaf Won’t Cover
Well, the first lesson should be, never, absolutely never engage in conversation with a serpent. That is where everything started to go downhill. Because where else would Satan strike but...
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There is Always Hope
The hospital room where my twenty-six-year-old daughter lay against snowy sheets grew quiet as a tomb. Her husband sat next to her. He leaned his back against the wall, holding her hand,...
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Who is that Baby in the Manger?
Every year, of my childhood, the first Saturday after Thanksgiving, Christmas pageant practice began. The characters were the same every year, the players different... ...In all the sweet...
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It is Good to Give Thanks
“I’ll still be here,” he whispered as he climbed back into bed next to me. The sun still slept outside the dark window. Chill replaced the warmth of good-bye hugs, of little arms around m...
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Train Up A Child
In the small town where I grew up, “turning out” was a big deal. A person turned out right when they got a steady job, got married, had a family, and stayed in the same church in which th...
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Can my prayer reach his suffering?
He sat alone at the table, palms pressed together like hands praying, shoulders hunched, and chin resting on the tips of his fingers. He stared into space a million galaxies away. Togethe...
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Banana Stickers and Big Questions
Charity bounced into the kitchen. Two braids swung behind her. Her black Italian school uniform covered mismatched pants and shirt. The hidden kaleidoscope of colors was her way of nose-t...
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6 Questions to Ask before you Click
"Think on these things” Without thinking I click praying hands. My heart goes out to the family’s post. Their picture and plea sit at the top of my feed. It’s been a rough year. I send a...
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A Lesson in Mommy-Wisdom That Broke Through My Insecurities
It was a sincere question, “What are some weaknesses you see in my parenting?” I thought I really wanted to know. My husband and I were both twenty-three with a still-young marriage and a...
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Each Day Is An Offering
You rode the rapids from the protection of my womb into the hands of a stranger. With that final push, our hello began but giving up started. Because each day is an offering. We separated...
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Bad Words and Clean Hearts
“But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person.” Matthew 15:18 (ESV) When our family moved to Italy and went through the agony of language learning, o...
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Call Me Mara
“Call me Mara,” Naomi said. Tragedy chiseled her face and spilled from her lips. Pleasant, the meaning of her name no longer fit. Mara, suited her, for it meant “bitter.” “I went out full...
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“Mom, how will I know he’s the one?” – 5 Ways to Prepare Them for Marriage
The question will come. It did for us as she sat on my lap, her baby-soft hand moved my chin to look at her face. Big blue eyes searched mine, “Mom, how did you know Dad was the one?” The...
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When Tarzan Married Penelope
What if Tarzan hadn’t married Jane, the tree swinger? What if Tarzan married Penelope who didn’t share the same desire to swing from a tree? What if she had no idea that people killed spi...
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I don't want them to have a mother like me
“I don’t want them to have a mother like me,” my daughter said. I sat in a heap, shoulders bent, my right side propped against the hospital bed. The children were always on her mind when...
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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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Mom, I'm such a sinner
The door opened with a bang against my front hall. “Mom!” Something was wrong. My heart revved like a racecar. I wiped wet hands against my apron and hurried to meet my daughter, home fro...
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When Mom called me "Sis"
“Hey Sis,” she said to get my attention in the store. She was more than double my age with white hair. She looked like my grandma. “Mom,” I hissed, “don’t call me Sis,” I always wanted a...
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Building A Family Legacy One Bedtime Story At A Time
I was transported. Seriously. When our kids were small we always read a Bible story before they went to sleep. Sometimes we read different books first, but the last story they could alway...
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Who is the Greatest
In a backdrop of politics, taxes and kings, the disciples came to Jesus with a question. Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? It was the underlying challenge of Satan when he sou...
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Guest Blog at 936 Pennies: Dear Weary Mama, Look Beyond
“How did you do it?” my daughter asks with an exasperated sigh, the kind that expires like a thin whisper from her soul. She is weary, and the noise level is high. She plops down next to...
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That One Perfect Moment Will Rescue Us Today
The sun streams through trees, dappling its light across the deck. Its brightness bathes my upturned face in warmth. I sigh, and the sound is a whisper of praise. It is a perfect moment,...
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Whatever Makes My Child Happy is Not the Right Answer
“The things I do for my kids,” I thought with a half eaten Big Mac in one gloved hand, and piece of wilted lettuce in the other. “But this tops them all.” I stood on a stool leaning into...
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Loving My Heroes
“Hi Beautiful,” he says from the doorway of her hospital room. He is slightly out of breath from hurrying, from untangling little arms squeezed around his neck, and giving the baby a bott...
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With 936 Weeks To Raise Our Kids, Maybe Parenting Isn’t About The Big Things
We were three weeks into a month-long road trip with our three young boys. And although we are no strangers to roadtripping with young children, I was feeling rather tired, overwhelmed, a...
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1 Day to Christmas: JESUS
The richness of Handel's Messiah rolled over me in crescendoes. It filled my house with its heavenly music. Christmas isn’t Christmas without it. “Mom, we lost baby Jesus again!” my frust...
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6 Days to Christmas: Truth
There is a whole lot of happenings that go before the birth of a baby. My soon-to-be-born grandson’s nursery took shape with a coat of paint, a baby bed, changing table, and rocking chair...
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14 Days to Christmas: KING OF KINGS
“Where is He who has been born King of the Jews?” Matt. 2:2. “For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.” Growing up, our family put up our tree the day after Tha...
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16 Days to Christmas: IMMANUEL
One of my dearest friends lay in the cold Kansas soil. November winds blew the tree limbs outside the window where we sat. My husband and I listened as the grieving spouse talked, his sor...
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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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20 Days to Christmas: ETERNAL
“and of his kingdom there will be no end…” the angel told Mary. Luke 1:32-33; ESV. “This takes forever,” my husband complained, scrutinizing his blank computer screen. Forever is a very l...
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One of our Veterans is missing today
(My husband Phil writes about his father.) There were those who went before us to battle against a great evil in our world decades ago. There are fewer and fewer of those World War II vet...
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Unconditional Finds Its Way Through a Child
Ps 78:5-7 “…That they should make them known to their children; That the generation to come might know them, The children who would be born, That they may arise and declare them to their...
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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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When Faithfulness is Truly Great
The crowd raises to its feet around the auditorium, a representation of a myriad of countries. Former missionaries who served in Brazil, Mali and Russia stand to sing. An elderly man, his...
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Silvery Words
My children had some hefty arguments when they were young. Words became darts. “She said,” “He said” often spiraled into something I had to step into. I needed to... Read the full devotio...
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Can you find joy in what you don’t enjoy?
Tired and worn after a difficult meeting, I’m eager to be home. The sight that greets me when I open the door is a dirty pan and a dish with lunch scraps. “At least he could have.... Read...
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When Blame Hits the Fan
It hits my life again. That inevitable desire to connect my circumstances with the actions of another and search for blame. “That woman you gave me,” Adam complained when confronted with...
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What's Hiding
I walked around the room with a rubber duck in my hand. I laid it in plain sight on a shelf of the book case. It’s classic yellow face and orange bill pointed to the door where my daughte...
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Redefine Your Roses
We are celebrating forty-three years of marriage. All you math people stop it. Just stop. It is a long time, that’s the point. I have spent forty-three years trying to figure out that “ma...
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Can anything eclipse God’s glory?
So, we are in the "path of totality," dead center for the total eclipse of the sun. It’s a little crazy. Major interstates are closing, people are camping out, hotels are full, and busine...
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What’s Good About Good-bye?
From the back seat window the countryside slid by. Green grape vines draped across wooden stakes like outstretched arms. The road ahead curved to the left, I knew it well. A hen, halted m...
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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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What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
The seconds tick at the cash register. We shake out our Italian, like a moth-eaten shirt, and blink away the fog of jet-lag. Everything is a de-j-vu of having been and done long ago. Phil...
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MY SON WAS THE BABY OF THE FAMILY AND HAD FOUR MOTHERS
After three daughters, it was only natural that our youngest son should have four mothers. I just wasn’t expecting how tight those sibling-mommy bonds could be. When one of them forgot to...
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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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Get Me Out Of Here
Back in the day when “missionary” brought to mind pith helmets for the men and polyester ruffles for the women, my husband and I took three little girls away from their grandparents and e...
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Mom and The Week of the Goat
“The week of the goat,” I will label it. It began the day I came home from school to find a goat tied up in our yard. For a thirteen-year-old it wasn’t cool, and as the bus came to a stop...
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Lovingkindness
Lovingkindness. I linger over the word like a morning cappuccino. I lean my head back, close my eyes, and savor it. “Let me hear Your lovingkindness in the morning; for I trust in You” (P...
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Nobody told Me to Bring a Rocking Chair
“In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” Isaiah 30:15; NKJV. When Phil and I left for Italy with a two-year-old, a four-year-old and...
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Mother Bear-ness
The sun was shining. Blue sky filled the kitchen window. My eight-year-old daughter played in front of our house with friends. I could hear voices, a mixture of laughter and children’s bo...
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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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Generations: God's Legacy
The car doors slam, and we slide into opposite sides. We look at one another, then sit silently and think over the last hour. The question comes again: “Will we be like that?” As our car...
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Meltdown Dread
I plunked her diaper-padded bottom into the shopping cart and directed two little legs into the slots. The mission began. I had one hour, one child with me, two others at home, and a whol...
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Thanks for your tip driver
My husband and I get a kick out of mistranslations, written instructions or explanations into English from another language. Perhaps it's because we have been on the other side. Language...
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Citizenship
“For our citizenship is in heaven…” I hold the blue covered booklet in my palm. Lines of weary travelers are long. They hold passports in green, maroon, and brown, irreplaceable identitie...
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Baal with a Pinch of God on the Side
“So Ahab sent for all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together on Mount Carmel.” (I Kings 18:20; NKJV). Let me paint the scene. A range of mountains, called the Carmel r...
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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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It came to pass in Second Grade
Once upon a time, long long ago, before people knew better than to celebrate Christmas in schools, when the principal could still haul a student to the office for a whopping, a second gra...
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Leftover Thanksgiving
“I’ll still be here,” he whispered as he climbed back into bed next to me. The sun still slept outside the dark window. Chill replaced the warmth of good-bye hugs, of little arms around m...
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The Good Life, Arrogance and Audacity
“For I was envious of the boastful, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.” Ps. 73:3 (NKJV). Asaph, King David’s talented musician had issues. He agonized over life’s inequality and unf...
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Put It On Pause
My family drives one another crazy with the pause button on the TV remote. We pause to go to the bathroom, we pause to get something to eat, and we pause because someone didn't catch on a...
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True love cares for the soul
My dad sang like Pavarotti, my mom accompanied him as if she could read his heart. Because they were so talented, we sang. A lot. Evenings we often gathered around the piano and harmonize...
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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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Check Your Words At The Door
Check Your Words at the Door, Please “…From the same mouth come blessing and cursing, My brothers, these things ought not to be so.” James 3:10 (ESV) I remember the gagging rancidity of s...
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Pink and Blue
Ephesians 5:33 (ESV) However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. As Pastoral care workers for our mission agency, my husband...
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Become is a process
From the back of the car, three kids sang with megaphone voices. “Keep your tongue from evil, keep your tongue, Keep your tongue from evil keep your tongue.” The melody echoes in my memor...
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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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The Big Red Elephant in the Room
“It’s not gonna turn out good for you,” Phil tells the young man and his lovely wife sitting close together on our couch. Their lives are about to tumble like clothes in a dryer. Packing...
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I can’t be good much longer
When our children were ten, seven and five, we blitzed throughout America for three months on a church-visiting, supporter-reporting, story-telling, home from Italy ministry tour. Our thr...
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Great Expectations
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”Hebrews13:8(NASB) Phil and I watched the series, Great Expectations over the holidays. I read the Charles Dicken’s classic in hi...
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The Sixth Stocking
Today is my son’s birthday. I wrote the following story over 20 years ago after he was born. It may be a little sappy, but is it a taste of the blessing he has been to us ever since the f...
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Hidden in God's Timeline
God’s timeline stretches, a banner of Sovereignty before time and ahead of time farther than any eye can see. Anna, advanced in years, a dot on the expanse of eternity, lived within the m...
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Tools
To perform certain tasks well one needs the right tools. My husband informed me of this when to my starry gaze a bedroom remodel looked like Pinterest, Wayfair and HGTV all blended togeth...
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Take the Crown
“Remind me again of why I love football,” I moaned. My gut sank while I watched another win slip into defeat. I felt like a deflated balloon. Not just for minutes, but for hours, even day...
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Erasing the evidence
I catch her busy little body as it flies by on thin legs and swing her onto my lap. She is the granddaughter of flaxen fairies, fair skin and fierce drama. Her legs pump air like a windmi...
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Miracles
“I am so ready for an angel to come,” Phil said that morning. I’d been thinking the same. I got up from my cot next to our daughter’s bed and joined my husband where he stood at her side....
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Lord of the harvest
“Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” Matt. 9:37-38 NKJ...
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Asleep with Angels
Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child…” The air mattress lay like a rubber raft in the middle of the living room, calling me to a short ni...
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Food Fights
A wise man doth not comment on his wife’s diet. Certain subjects within marriage wisdom doth behoove us to tip-toe past. Weight gain and loss is one of those. Is important to keep yoursel...
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Remembering
I am not a good rememberer, and it has much less to do with my age than with my desire. My husband loves to remember. He enjoys thinking about the past, pouring over pictures from years g...
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Living in the Projects
Living in the Projects The upstairs of our house is down to its studs. A major project is underway. Between now and the vision of a new bathroom and bedroom is a gorge of unimaginable pro...
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The Great Commission Still Beckons
My husband grew up the pale-skinned blond boy in a black and white background of Ecuador. A child of missionaries, he biked deserted dirt roads, rode in airplanes and ate iguana. Immune t...
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Late Bloomer
Call me a late bloomer, but pushing senior citizen status is really late for deep-seated rebellion to raise its obnoxious head. I’m not having some sort of delayed reaction to restrictive...
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He Knows
Recently I talked to a friend armed with a list of bitter accusations. She began what soon became a blame saga with the words, “You’ll never know…” Since that conversation those words hav...
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