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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Jesus & Gospel
332 articles gathered under this theme.
Is Go Into All the World Outdated?
I remember the cool feel of the wooden pew in the church of my childhood, that little hop I needed to get my seat onto it, the shimmied push to the back until finally ruffles surrounded m...
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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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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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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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That Last Glimpse Prepares Us For A First
It might have been at our little town’s parade, or maybe at the State fair, but I have a faded memory from childhood of a cart with balloons floating above it. They were bunched together...
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Who Gets the Credit?
You’ve worked hard, poured yourself into the project, sacrificed and finally it’s done. And it turned out good. No, even better than expected. In fact, you feel down right euphoric about...
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When Christian Living Fights a Battle With Compromise
“Owwwwwch!” I moaned to no one but anyone who might be so inclined as to listen. Making the bed has its risks. Working from left to right I consistently stub my toes on the hard edge of t...
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Do You Recognize Jesus?
I stretch my arm in waking fogginess. My fingers begin a walking search for my glasses. I am not a morning person. “Not” in an extreme sense. I get up at neither an insanely early hour no...
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In Awe and Wonder of How Great Thou Art
Slowly the crowd came to its feet. Some laboriously used the row ahead for leverage. Over the attendees, silver glinted, like imperfect halos, caught by the lighting above. Although the g...
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The Relevance of Truth
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, it turns out that its value may be much less. Fake photos on social media showed captured U.S. Soldiers and Tel Aviv in shambles. They...
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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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Faith During Troubling Times
Our grandson drops his arms and ducks his chin. His despair comes from missing a soccer goal, a basketball shot gone wrong, or a race not won. His feet drag. He is disheartened. Unfortuna...
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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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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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Winter’s Damage Reveals the Soul
Whiter than snow, Lord, whiter than snow. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Wherever you live in the USA, you’ve been aware of the great snow storm. You have likely been part of pr...
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Can We Step Off the Pedestal, Please?
“He hit me first,” little arms cross in defiance, and little legs plant firmly. No retreat without a struggle. These are days grown ups brawl and pick sides, while firmly clinging to thei...
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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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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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A Christmas Search for Jesus
Every year for the last five years my three youngest grandchildren have come to our house in December for Starry Night. The idea birthed in 2020 when the “Christmas Star” appeared. It was...
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Thankful Hearts Are Tied to Trust
Long before America created an overflowing and beautifully sophisticated Thanksgiving table, thanksgiving was a thing. Before pilgrims gathered around a rough wood hewn table, or a sweet...
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What If You Don’t Feel Like Giving Thanks?
In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 (NKJV) Last weekend I picked up my grandson’s big fat backpack to throw over my should...
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Thanking God For All I See
“Thank you for the sghetti,” the little voice said. My daughter’s hands, folded in prayer sat against the edge of the kitchen table. Those first prayers were so pure and yet so very contr...
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What Message Are You Giving?
What is it about autumn that calls all gnats into my kitchen like the plagues of Egypt? And woe to the one who leaves out the banana peelings. Jesus’ message in Matthew, chapter 23, seem...
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Autumn’s Dappled Light
It’s been a long yawn to full Autumn in Virginia. Trees have hesitated to blush but few have succumbed to their eventual fiery reds and yellows. This season seems hesitant to drop its lea...
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What Does Practice Make Perfect?
My dad, talented in all things musical, had a sharp ear and perfect pitch. “Should have been a B-flat not a B-natural.” He could be working the back forty, but when I struck a wrong note...
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God Is In the Detour
My friend looked in his rearview mirror and saw the sign to a church, which propelled him to whip his car into an unplanned detour. His life’s trajectory changed that Sunday by his decisi...
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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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Can God Change Your Character?
“The temperature will be 94 degrees Fahrenheit, but it will feel like 104,” says the weather man. And I smile. That is my world. He is describing me. It’s kind of a faulty default. My act...
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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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The Upkeep No One Sees
There is a whole lot of unseen upkeep in life. Changing sheets, mowing lawn, washing laundry, servicing the car, making meals, planning groceries, unplugging drains, buying supplies, fixi...
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The Greatest of All Miracles
You know the type, right? The one who must correct every statement another makes. Someone who can wax eloquent on just about everything, and does. That person. The one who knows it all. T...
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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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To Strengthen And Encourage In The Faith
She sat in front of me, a crumpled mess. Words halted and poured again like the start and go of a sputtering fountain. Lines furrowed her forehead. They drew the portrait of a weary soul....
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My Blessing of Struggles
I’m so excited to share with you something from my daughter Charity. As a result of a mass on her brain stem when she was twenty-six, Charity lives with incomplete-quadriplegia. She wrote...
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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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Are You Really The Best?
I found the crayon-drawn picture lying on a chair, during my hurry-and-pick-up-the-house-cleaning. Time tightened before guests arrived, and the house reflected the chaos of muddy shoes a...
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Have You Been Living A Scammed Life?
A message on my phone encouraged me to contact a certain Margaret. It seems she wants to recruit me for a job. I have great potential to earn an amazing amount of money. In fact, my name...
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How Do I See Others?
I tilted my head a bit to look for myself in his stick figure drawing. I wondered is this truly how he saw me? “Is that me?” I asked. He nodded. He held a felt tip marker in a small hand...
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Keeping Your Balance In An Imbalanced World
She toddles toward me, hands outstretched. My eyes are wide, excited and inviting, “Come on,” I urge with a half whisper. A foot lifts, and then another. A wobbly sort of drunken-sailor-t...
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Does Jesus Always Answer What We Ask For?
“If Jesus wanted to,” my little seven-year-old fellow classmate declared, “He could flatten my thumb and make it big enough to go around the whole world.” He held his thumb inches from my...
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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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What Is God Teaching You?
“What’s God been teaching you through His Word?” I ask as we settle in, past the mundane of life. We’ve left behind kids, jobs, routines, and the cycle of activities that spin our lives....
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Do You Need Faith Supplements?
I’m not sure how old they were, but to me the title “ancient” applied. My parents, had an entire cabinet of dietary supplements. Every morning they’d pull them out and a ritual began. The...
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Decay Meets Our Bodies, Victory Meets Our Souls
In the budding of a greening spring, bringing life and color to these naked woods, a lot of decay happens. We counted five dead deer on the way to church. Vultures are having a feast. Sur...
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Who Are You Wearing?
Have you, like me, noticed how very popular the emblem of the cross is in jewelry and clothing? Both men and women wear crosses around their necks, fingers, waists, and wrists. Crosses ad...
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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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Are you sure you have the right address?
We started married life in an upstairs apartment of a small house in a small town. Below us lived our landlady and her son. I always heard her puttering about in the kitchen. She puttered...
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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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Patterns of Life
I am sitting in a waiting room again. Waiting…’cause, that’s what people do in a waiting room. Wondering…which goes with the territory. Worried…it’s part of the package too. It will be a...
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A Pivot in Time Marks Eternity
His eyes lighted when he saw me walking toward him in the crowd. My grandson headed straight toward me with a smile, and sidled up against my side. He stretched his arms around me and squ...
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What Are you Steeping In?
My British friend with her lovely accent once said to me, “Americans have been putting tea into the water since the Boston Tea party, and from then on they’ve kept right on doing it the 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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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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Are You a Quitter?
When my daughter woke up on the day which changed all of our lives, it started pretty much like every other day. She felt a bit dizzy. She checked her temperature, but she didn’t have a f...
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A New Year, A New Self
We make promises. We plan, envision, re-calibrate, and define goals. We look ahead and behind. We hope, determine, and anticipate. We look forward to a white page, a whole year ahead, wit...
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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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Of His Kingdom There Will Be No End
How many times have you said, “there’s just no end to this?” Paperwork, bills, middle of the night feedings, late at night work shifts, or maybe it’s simply the dirty pile of dishes in th...
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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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Do Autumn Leaves remind you of Life in Christ?
It’s autumn. I’ve gotta admit that I am not a fan of fall. I see the beauty in the Virginia reds, yellows, and oranges. I love the floating leaves in the air. I like the sound of their cr...
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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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Be Imitators of Me
Three of my grandsons love baseball. And that is an understatement. Growing up they lived it. They chewed wads of gum, memorized plays, and spit. Yes, those little guys could spit with th...
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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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The Reward of Achievement
If you were to walk the streets of Bologna, Italy during a spattering of months out of the year, you might see a confusing sight. Now and again whether in a crowd or walking alone, amid A...
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How Edgy Are You?
My dad used to have some succinct sayings to get his points across, as in, “ain’t got the brains God gave a goose.” This pronouncement, often hurled at politicians, portrayed a questionab...
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Are You Running Well?
I have some dear friends, whom I love very much even though they run. I mean really run. On purpose. Because they like it. They have a few years up on me, yet they are forever completing...
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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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Do You Greet or Meet With Jesus?
Our church has started a meet and greet time during the service as many churches do. It is one of those things which make introverts run for the bathroom. Although it is a good practice f...
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We The Fickle
The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will. Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart. (Proverbs 21:1 ESV...
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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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Grandsons, Scooters, and Laying Down the Law
“Put me in jail, put me in jail,” our six year-old grandson shouted. “Put me in jail, Gramma,” The boy’s scooters whizzed by, daring me to move out of the way, challenging me to capture l...
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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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When God Seems Remote
I was my big brothers’ TV remote. I can still hear their call. Through the bleaching heat waves of Kansas, over the baked and cracked ground, their summons reached me. Underfoot brown far...
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Are You Barely Hanging On?
“Just hang on,” he told me. I was at the wrong end of a washing machine stuck cattywampus in the stairwell half-way down to the basement. The heavy metal box towered above as I tried to h...
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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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Do People See Who You Really Are?
“Is that your son?” I asked pointing to the little guy who had just scored on my grandson’s soccer team. Strangers to one another, we’d been standing side by side echoing with the same gr...
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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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The Victorious Crown of Thorns
We call them “thorny situations.” They describe something we’d usually rather avoid. Because thorns hurt. Because a situation wrought with barbs and little wiggle room is bound to bring p...
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Is It Too Heavy?
“It’s too heavy,” he whined. His little hands strained to lift a fat rough log. He wanted to imitate his grandpa who seemed to hoist them like twigs into a wheelbarrow. The red cheeks of...
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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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The Best Kind Of Love
His little fingers dripped with orange greasy pizza oil and stuck together with chocolate fudge-vanilla. I checked his face and found it wreathed with those same streaks of orange and bla...
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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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Who Holds Your Heart?
One of our teenaged granddaughters spent a few days with us recently. She came loaded with gift cards she’d received from Christmas. We spent a day shopping and she had a day of bliss. Bu...
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How Balanced Are You?
Balance. It’s a thing. She toddles toward me, hands outstretched. My eyes are wide, excited and inviting, “Come on,” I urge with a half whisper. A foot lifts, and then another. A wobbly s...
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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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What does satisfaction look like to you?
“That was so satisfying,” my grandson said. Surprised, I wondered, “Where did that came from?” He had just fished out a slippery shard of thin ice from a puddle. It lay shattered like gla...
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Is Jesus the Prince of Peace?
“For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Princ...
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Everlasting Father
“For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Princ...
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Is Jesus Our Mighty God?
“For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Princ...
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Who is My Wonderful Counselor?
“For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Princ...
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Look Beyond Your Own Table
Long before America created an overflowing and beautifully sophisticated Thanksgiving table, thanksgiving was a thing. Before pilgrims gathered around a rough wood hewn table, or a sweet...
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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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Light and Peace in a Dark World
How dark it must seem to walk in the thick dust of bombed buildings and destroyed lives. How thick would be the despair of cruelty, death and loss. And how desolate feels a future built f...
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What Appetite Are You Feeding?
My grandsons are going through the picky eating stage. I’ve watched all fourteen grandchildren hit it along the way, and it never fails to bring back memories of my own children’s fussy e...
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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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If Jesus Wanted To
“If Jesus wanted to,” my little seven-year-old fellow classmate declared, “He could flatten my thumb and make it big enough to go around the whole world.” He held his thumb inches from my...
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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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Are You Spiritually Limping or Confidently Walking?
When one of our daughters was in second grade, her school teacher mentioned an issue that she’d observed. Our daughter had begun to limp. She complained about her leg hurting, especially...
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What Offends God?
I don’t often sit around begrudging my past. Shoot, it’s difficult to remember what happened yesterday, but I admit, there are some offenses that are more difficult to forget than others....
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A Light to My Path
When the sun streams into my kitchen window, it cheers my soul. Everything literally seems brighter. Its brilliance however, illuminates more than just the room. Particles of dust flicker...
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It's Not Fair
So, my grandson who is four years old beat me at a game of memory. There are a lot of reasons this happened. The cards, for example had some sort of out of this world superpower heroes. I...
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Old Backgrounds, New Creation, and A Happy Father’s Day
What is a “new creation?” Am I one? Are you? “…if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV). Who Gets What? B...
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Is Your Life On Mission?
Tiny baby puffs of air caress my cheek. Her dark hair, fuzzy and soft, tickles against my neck. What can be sweeter than those barely heard snores and the soft breathing of an infant warm...
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Jesus’ Ascension: What Makes This Good-bye Different?
“See that Momma?” a little voice by my side questioned. His face tilted up toward the sky. His eyes squinted against the brightness. I followed the line from where his finger pointed to s...
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Precious Scars Invite Faith
Two favorite features on my nose are little grooves that criss cross the surface. They are barely distinguishable, but I’m proud of them. Both remind me of people I love. One reminds me o...
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Where to Set Our Attention in an Attention Shifting World
Thor belongs to four of my grandchildren. He is a Vizsla with a beautiful brown coat and liquid brown eyes which clearly speak dog-beg. He knows exactly how to sit at your feet and patien...
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A Passover Rebel and The Lamb
“Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. And among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabb...
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The Tipping Point
Life holds a succession of pivotal moments. They distinguish themselves with phrases like, “from now on,” “if I had it to do all over again, “never again,” or “I’ve made my decision.” But...
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Finding Balance When the Lava Flows
“Don’t step on the lava!” It’s a chorus of young and old watching little bare feet hop, skip, and jump from pillow to pillow, over and under chairs. My youngest grandson just turned four....
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When Insignificant Connectors Pave the Way To Important Truths
This morning I woke up feeling like it was time to go to bed, like every year of my life creaked and groaned somewhere or someplace in my connections. Purpose felt dried and brittle. Piec...
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Do You Carry More Than You Should?
Oh my goodness, how I loved my three older brothers. With a number of years between us, I looked up to them like heroes, as if the sun rose and set in their background. And in spite of be...
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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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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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Does God Hear Me?
My blender is revving up with its loud whir when the door bangs open and my grandson runs in from outdoors. He puts on the brakes barely past the threshold, stops, and covers his ears. I...
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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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Four Questions from the Christmas Story that Could Transform Your Christmas
Four different Biblical characters in the Christmas Story point to answers which might change the way you see Christmas. 1. “How can I be sure of this?” (Luke 1:18 ESV) Zechariah the prie...
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How Prepared Are You?
Black Friday, get-all-you-can-day, comes directly after be-Thankful-for-what-you-have-Day. Ironically paradoxical isn’t it? After feeding on bounty and gratefulness we rise from our fatte...
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Measure Your Heart of Thanksgiving
“We will be measuring your daughter for a wheel chair at 3:00 this afternoon,” the nurse told me with a cheerful smile on her face. Befuddled images traced vellum pages on my mind. A brid...
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Whatever State You are In Today
Whatever State You are In Today “Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content.” Philippians 4:11 NKJV So what state did you wake up in? Red...
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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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Sometimes There's Creep
It wasn’t unusual to hear our house creak, but the distinct soft footsteps on the staircase made my scalp tingle. I stood quietly inside my bedroom on the second floor, then creeped to th...
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Are Your Eyes on the Right Goal?
Lined up side by side, ready to take off, my grandson’s restraining arm shoots out across his little brother’s stomach. “Go!” Big brother shouts. They take off across our grass. It’s a du...
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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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How Well Do You Know Me?
It’s a routine day at Grandpa and Grandma’s. A brightly colored skyscraper of towering Duplo blocks decorates the middle of the living room. Grandpa has taken time off from his Foot-a-eat...
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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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When Life Doesn’t Turn Out Like I Think It Should
“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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True or False: You Only Live Once
“You only live once,” she quipped. Laughter followed that flippant remark. I turned away from the screen. I’ve used those same words to justify indulgences from purchases, to a risk, and...
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Would You Rather Be a Bullfrog And Other Important Questions
“Would you rather be a bullfrog?” I ask my grandsons. My finger dramatically lands on the big green bullfrog leaping across the left side of the page. The book with the same title, by The...
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How Harvest Time Points to God’s Impeccable Timing
The blue-overall-clad farmer plucked a bearded head from its white stalk. His form blotted a black silhouette against the bright sky. I squinted in the sunshine. A shadow lay across me, i...
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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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Defining Peace When We Have None
If you have been disturbed by current events, you aren’t alone. We’ve had weeks of images difficult to forget. Wouldn’t it be so nice to turn on the TV and find the world at peace, evil c...
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Growing Up To Be Mom
Little hands on mighty hips, my seven-year-old face-offed with her teacher. The innocent question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” torched the classroom. It seems out of the en...
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It’s Not Over Yet
Holidays come down with a splat for me once they are over. If I’d schedule a pity-party that is precisely when it would be. It’s symptomatic of intense preparation coupled with a lack of...
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Why Did Mary Anoint Jesus For His Burial Before He Died?
A big plastic red cup sits on the edge of the tub where he bathes. It keeps company with a yellow ducky, Noah’s ark, and a flapping tailed fish. The cup, once used for drinking water, now...
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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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Taste, Smell and Spiritual Sense
“It has no taste,” I told my husband last summer, disappointed the meat on my plate was not cooked right. But once the words came out, I recognized them as significant. My sense of taste...
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What Do You See?
“I no see it,” he says. His little spying eyes are squinted almost shut, focused on finding the far away airplane I point towards in the blue sky. “There,” I say to my three-year-old gran...
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Can Someone Like That Ever Change?
The talk was fierce. Fear rampant. He had orchestrated one murder, and was bent on more. Mobs and riots cheered the violence he inspired. It was unthinkable someone like that could ever c...
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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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Hidden Temper, Undeserved Grace
“Thar’ she blows,” a friend quipped of his late wife. A sweet soul and my dear friend, she apparently hid a temper under her skin, not easily aroused but impressive to its recipients. He...
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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 About Unanswered Prayer?
“What?” he asks. Only it’s not so much a question as a two-year-old’s bold reaction to just about everything. His forehead draws together, his questioning mouth opens and his head jerks a...
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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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How To Bring Glory Into Your Christmas Celebration
I’ve had Christmases without snow, gifts scarce, and family missing, but I’ve never had one without Handel’s Messiah filling my airwaves. When I think of Christmas glory, it is always wit...
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My Christmas Gift Bought with a Child’s Heart
My son’s eyes sparkled like sun kissed waters when he pulled a bright red package from under the tree. His little hands reverently held the wrapped box, its smashed bow wobbled, as if rea...
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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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Thanksgiving Transforms Hearts
As we enter the season of thanksgiving, I love the emphasis on remembering, being aware of the little things, the falling leaves, slivers of sunshine and raindrops of life. We talk of the...
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How To Know Right from Wrong
We went to Italy back in our young days knowing my husband might have an advantage in language and culture. He grew up as a missionary kid in Ecuador. I grew up a farmer’s kid in Kansas....
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The Purpose of Suffering
Almost three years had passed, since our daughter’s illness, but the pain hadn’t lifted. It wrapped around me like a lead blanket. Peter, Jesus’ disciple and I were buds. “While walking b...
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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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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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Bitter Roots
I yanked and pulled until the weed snapped, its root still intact like a vein under the skin of the earth. I’m not a great gardener. I might even be a lousy gardener. Roots like those, wi...
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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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If a Tree Falls in a Forest?
"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" I’ve not lived a long time in Virginia, but in the time I have, I’ve seen a lot of trees. Coming from...
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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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Grandparents Day And The Grandparent I Never Knew
“Gamma!” my little grandson shouts. He begins his own personal happy dance with one chubby knee up first, then a big hop on one leg and a galloping pivot that nearly knocks him flat. Thos...
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Kinda Like God Who Sees All We Do
My youngest grandchild has begun to climb out of his crib with his mattress as low as possible while wearing his sleep sack. It’s a feat. The security camera recording shows his formidabl...
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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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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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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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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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Do You Really Wanna Be Full?
“I wanna be full,” my grandson says. Tomato red rims his mouth, like the ring around a bullseye. Sauce lies draped down the front of his green shirt. A whole lotta food didn’t hit the mar...
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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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When Heads Come Together
Two heads are better than one the saying goes, but besides the obvious intellectual melding of minds, a much sweeter truth is communicated when two heads come together. A mommy rests her...
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Does Putting Ourselves First Come Naturally?
“Putting ourselves first doesn’t come naturally,” a glossy magazine lay open on my lap. I said aloud to absolutely no one, “Well that’s a bunch of bologna.” The article continued in the s...
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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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The Resurrection Isn’t Over
Hey, not so fast. Although the Easter holiday is past, the resurrection is not. “After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He ap...
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Resurrection Hope Moves the Stone Away
Things had begun to get dicey. Fame’s two sided coin’s darker side threatened. Not everyone was a fan of Jesus nor of those who claimed to be His followers. Jesus laid out coming events,...
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Jesus Gets Personal With His Disciples
It’s the craziest thing when you see someone who looks like someone else from some place else in a place they shouldn’t be found. When we moved to Italy across the ocean, across culture a...
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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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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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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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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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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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What if My Angel’s Wing is Clipped?
I found it in the bottom of a box marked kitchen in big bold Sharpie script. Moving and packing can throw the best laid organizational plans askew. Not enough space in a box mixes with to...
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How Far Would You Travel if Everything Aligned?
“After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw hi...
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I Never Thought of It Like That
It was the usual mayhem of opened plastic totes, lids tossed aside and Christmas decor spilling onto the floor. A just decorated tree and mantel already changed the entire look of the roo...
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My Life Has Not Turned Out the Way I Expected
A year ago, before the shadow of Covid darkened our skies, my daughter wrote a guest post. As we look for the light at the end of the 2020 tunnel, it relates to our lives now even more. T...
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No Thank You
I’ve written before about my hatred for goats, but somehow this year, it seems appropriate to revisit that dislike. No Thank You I hated goats. Dorothy hated being milked. She was an ugly...
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Have We Lost Thanksgiving?
Proclamation 118—Thanksgiving Day, 1864 October 20, 1864 Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November...
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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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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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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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What to Do When Life is Miserable
“What to do when life is miserable,” I suppose there are those of you out there that don’t know what I’m talking about. You’ve never had a miserable day in your life. I will not tell you...
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Reacting to Authority
A finge of black lashes, thick and long shadow his blue eyes. They only partially hide his hurt and uncertainty. They tug at my heart like a messy knotted umbilical cord. “…For the Lord…”...
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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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How to be Ready Before it Takes Place
Sometimes I just want to see to the other side before I get there. I confess to reading the last page of a book to calm my nerves in the middle, or wanting to know the end of a movie befo...
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Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?
“Can’t we all just get along?” she asked. Watery pools gathered at the bottom of her eyes ready to splash over, waterfalls of reflected blue. Life as a thirteen-year-old had become invade...
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Is There a Smile Hiding Under Your Mask?
Like puzzle pieces of an entire, we can only guess what’s behind the mask as we pass in a parking lot, at work, or in a store. But if eyes are indeed the window of the soul, we should be...
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A Perfect Tree and Its Reminder to Be Thankful
This week when I was out walking, I saw a perfect tree. I paused to look up and appreciate the sway in the wind, its colors moving in and out of sunlight, its form and height. Under its o...
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How to Have 2020 Vision in This Strange Time
Every morning I take a walk in the city and pass a spot where I can see a massive field of grain. As I top a hill it’s there. My entire vision fills with gold. Day by day whiter, riper, f...
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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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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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What Does it Mean to be Close?
“Oh mom,” my college aged daughter said, and could it be I heard a tiny bit of impatience in her voice? “Half the kids I know in college live in the same town as their parents and they ar...
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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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How Do You Define Faith in the Coronavirus Pandemic?
Maybe now is actually the right time to doubt your faith. How can I say such a thing in the middle of the biggest global crises most of us have experienced? Why would I bring more uncerta...
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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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It’s Time to Grow Up
My husband and I stayed in a motel in Nashville two nights before a tornado ripped through the area. We watched the destruction on television and wondered at the fact that we were just th...
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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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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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Love, Social Media and Noise
In the love month, my challenge to you is to read what is called the love chapter in the Bible. 1 Corinthians 13 always convicts me of straying tentacles of my heart strings, and is alway...
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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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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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Is your practice helpful or harmful?
My dad, talented in all things musical, had a sharp ear and an equally sharp tongue. His pitch was perfect. He judged without apology. “Should have been a B-flat not a B-natural,” he burs...
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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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Get rid of the Filth and Put on the Clean
Before farms had fashionable “mud rooms,” they existed. “Don’t you come in the front porch,” my mom insisted to my black-dirt-clothed brothers before supper. Because of course on the farm...
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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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My Mom, a Bar of Soap and Clean Talk
My parents weren’t really the “let the consequences teach her” kind of people. They were more the “let’s give her some consequences” types. But since I could always count on what my actio...
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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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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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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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An Audacious Crown of Thorns
“Are you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate. “You have said so,” Jesus replied. (Mark 15:2; NIV) Easter mornings looked like new clothes and smelled like ham baking. It culminated with E...
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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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How Wet are Your Feet?
They come, like the Israelites in Joshua 3-4, instructed to stick a foot into the water, and trust God for the next step. Testing, poking and prodding Jesus’ calling on their lives, they...
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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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Looking for Immanuel in the Christmas that Almost Isn’t
When sparkling lights are only beeps and monitors on a hospital screen. When money is lean and gifts few. When a bucket sits next to a miserably fevered child. When uncertainty shrouds ho...
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Joseph Did You Know?
Rows of little feet too short to reach the floor, swung like swing sets on long wooden pews. Lined up by grades, and bookended by teachers, the oldest sat in the back, the littlest in the...
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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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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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Straining Gnats and Swallowing Camels
Ugg, this time of year I fight a big battle with a tiny creature. What is it about autumn that calls all gnats in the Kansas City area into my kitchen like the plagues of Egypt? Woe to th...
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Those Detours on my Street
I have a friend who looked in his rear view mirror and saw the sign to a church, which propelled him to whip his car into into an unplanned detour. It altered his entire life. His traject...
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God Doesn't Mind Your Issues
"She has, you know…issues.” I hate having “issues.” The dreaded connotation underlying the word implies different, problematic, maybe even burdensome. I hate burdensome. Yet the reality i...
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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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“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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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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If You Need Me, I'll Call You
Sunshine bright with glory bathed our tiny backyard. Blue sky beckoned. Winter months had been long for our four-year-old son, and he was ready for play. “If you need me, I’ll call you,”...
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Easter Reboot
“Try rebooting,” my husband tells me. It seems rebooting is the castor oil of ailing computers. It always gives me a gut ache, like I may never again see beyond the spinning wheel on my s...
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Easter Sunday Brings Monday After
“…be transformed by the renewal of your mind…” When we lived in Italy I loved the day after Easter because it was also a holiday. While Easter Sunday was chocked full of activity, food an...
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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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Those Conjunctions in Our Lives
Suddenly prepositions and conjunctions are popping up in my Bible everywhere, because in fact, they are everywhere, joining words and clauses. I’ve overlooked them. What are little insign...
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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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The Father That Loves Me
A fistful of trousers yanks in my grandson’s little hand. “Dadda,” he urges. His little face is upturned. Longing and hope fix his expression. My grandson expects response. After all, thi...
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Stepping Forward With God
I’ve never been one to jump with two feet into a new year. I don’t even take giant steps boldly into the future. Let me tip toe into it with baby steps, slightly fearful and hopeful not t...
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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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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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3 Days to Christmas: WAY
A dirt road led to the house I grew up in. I loved that road. Impassible in winter, a mud pit in spring, and like the dust bowl in summer. No other house sat on that road. It was the way...
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4 Days to Christmas: VINE
I used to stuff little arms into sleeves like a turkey at Thanksgiving. But somewhere between the years of babies and grand babies, the art went south. I’m all thumbs, trying to capture s...
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5 Days to Christmas: Unchangeable
My Christmas list looks like a paper war zone. I have crossed off, scribbled over and shifted names and gifts until there isn’t much space left to write, and no I am not done yet. I am no...
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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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7 Days to Christmas: Son of the Highest Lk. 1:32
No one is higher. “He will be great, and will be called Son of the Highest” Luke 1:32; NKJV, the angel told Mary. He is as high as high gets. Son of the Highest is like the title God Most...
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8 Days to Christmas: RULER-Shepherd
“For out of you (Bethlehem) shall come a Ruler who will shepherd My people Israel.” Matt. 2:6; NKJV. I love the idea of ruler-shepherd. It’s almost an oxymoron, two impossibles joined tog...
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9 Days to Christmas: PRINCE OF PEACE
“…and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6; KJV. When Isaiah penned those words, Israel was being decima...
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10 Days to Christmas: OMEGA
“I AM the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the End,” says the Lord. Jesus had a birthday. Just like us, from the day He drew His first breath, time moved toward His death. Alpha and...
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11 Days to Christmas: NAME
I peeked at the little form of my granddaughter. Black eyelashes quivered against pale cheeks as she kneeled at the bedside of her mommy. “Jesus, peeease help her move again,” she prayed....
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12 Days to Christmas: MAJESTY
So the bad dude king, Herod, called his chief priests and scribes together for a little pow-wow, a sneaky set-a-trap-for-the-baby kind of meeting. “Where is He who has been born King of t...
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13 Days to Christmas: LIGHT
Christmas lights are evil, my friend wrote on a facebook post. I know what she means. Tangled strands that don’t light are irritating. But the original Christmas lights were a different s...
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15 Days to Christmas: JESUS
Picking a baby’s name is a big deal. Seriously. Our third daughter was three days old before we agreed that Charity she would be for all eternity. Mary and Joseph didn’t have that dispute...
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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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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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22 Days to Christmas: Creator
One tiny fist stretches high above my newborn grandson's head. Like a miniature superman ready for take off he poses against the soft blue blanket where he lies. He uncurls his legs, elon...
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23 Days to Christmas: Bread of Life
Flour whitens the front of my shirt like snow. I brush at it fruitlessly with a hand sticky with wrinkled bits of dough like hanging chads. My counter space, with its strict no fly-zone i...
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24 Days to Christmas: Ancient of Days
God is always on time, yet I often wonder why He waits so long. I tilt the scissor's blade against the length of bright red ribbon. Curls slither through my fingers in tiny ringlets where...
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Losing Thanksgiving
Proclamation 118—Thanksgiving Day, 1864 October 20, 1864 Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do hereby appoint and set apart the last Thursday in November...
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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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Thanksgiving Despite Unhappy Circumstances
Thanksgiving tangled with unanswered prayers. I slumped against the antiseptic tiled hallway. My stalwart, “Hang on and hold it in,” gave way to unrestrained tears like prisoners let free...
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When the Dots Don’t Line Up
Sometimes the dots line up, and we connect one to the other and the picture is clear. We see what God was trying to do and we say, “Oh, I get it. That’s why that had to happen that way.”...
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Three things Harvey and Irma Teach us About Prayer
“…He does according to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.” Daniel 4:35; NKJV In anticipation of what could be one of the worst storms of modern history...
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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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Are You a Good Lover?
I’m not a good lover. Let me pause before you think I just handed you more information than you care to receive, like a bad Facebook post. Here is what I mean: I don’t know how to love li...
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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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When I Asked to Know You
There is a sudden ache in my gut, like I’ve been kicked. As much as I prepare for hospital-sterile, IV’s and blinking lights, the moment I enter my daughter’s room I cannot stop the sudde...
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True Worship Has Nothing To Do With Those
I wedged myself half onto my daughter’s hospital bed. The other half rested uncomfortably over the gap between my cot and Charity’s paralyzed body. I’d prayed every possible prayer in eve...
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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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When It's Too Heavy
They watched the One they loved suffer agony and succumb to a tortuous death. It was the greatest event of history, but they likely didn’t realize it. To experience exceeds preparedness....
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Spring Cleaning
Spring Cleaning My hands immersed in suds, I stand at the kitchen sink and gaze at the aura of green tinging the trees against blue sky outside my window. Buds are beginning to open. A hi...
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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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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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Bye-Gones
“…if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17 (ESV). Backgrounds. Everyone has them. They are the backdrop of our...
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I Hear Knocking
After a weird night of outside noises, my foggy early morning Bible reading arrives at Revelation 3:20. The familiarity of its long ago memorized words steal into my heart immediately lik...
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Fake News, True God
Herod the Great ruled Jerusalem and its surrounding villages with cruelty and deceit. His ruthless murders made him almost as famous as the magnificent building projects he instituted. Du...
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That Time
It may be that Christmases have sped up, maybe they really do come more often, or possibly it’s time warp of aging, but it is that time of the year again. I have a billion things to do, a...
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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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Take a Right at the Llama
I pull a faded black suitcase, it’s wheels rumble over the sidewalk, a grey path between verdant green. The rhythm of smooth concrete broken by lines reminds me of the clickety-clack of a...
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Five Things to Repeat on November 9
I am writing this one week before the American election. I figure I will need to read it to myself after the election. Several times. Repeat after me. And the prize goes to… Romans 13:1-2...
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Sfoons, forks and miracles
“Thank you for the sghetti,” my daughter prayed. Her little fingers entwined into a ball were folded against the edge of the kitchen table. Her forehead puckered and her eyes squinted. Th...
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Are You Listening?
Hot tiny hands warm both sides of my cheeks, smooth and just a little bit forceful. They pull my face upward from where I sit engrossed in my screen so our eyes are even. Hers, translucen...
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Paralytically Speaking
If people would ask me how I feel about the event of my daughter’s paralyzation nine years ago, I might want to say a lot of things. One is that it makes me sad in waves of sorrow. Period...
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Politics and the Real Life
I confess. I yell at the TV. I’ve even thrown a pillow or two. Watching media news at our house looks much the same as watching a football game, albeit a very depressing one. Why watch yo...
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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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Do you have Holes in your net?
My net has holes. “While walking by the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.” Matt...
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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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Don't Blink
To my dear daughters and daughter-in-law, who are doing a priceless job of being mommies who love Jesus and train my grandchildren to love Him as well. People say it will all be done in a...
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Heading the right direction
Squiggled blue and red lines crisscross between Kansas City and our destination. The map divides my screen into roads and rivers. I know where I’m headed, but I don’t know the route. This...
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Needing Jesus
Scenes of carnage replay across the screen. Footage shows people running, crying, bleeding, images of devastation and grief. Brussels, Paris, even Hesston Kansas, fifteen miles from where...
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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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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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Can thankfulness really be commanded?
Can thankfulness really be commanded? “In everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Thess. 5:18 (NASB) Well, yes, apparently it can. It is the season of g...
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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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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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God beggar
“I am a God beggar,” I think, looking down into the hopeful eyes of my two-year-old grandson. I reach down and pull the tiny dimpled arms from around my leg, hold his chubby hands in mine...
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Mom's Legacy
On the farm, after dark meant black. Light shone from a tall pole smack in the middle of the yard. A sphere of brightness left edges beyond with shadows that bent and swayed. The big grey...
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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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Watch and Pray
Jesus’ admonishment to the disciples in the garden of Gethsemane is intriguing. “Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Mar...
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I Can't Do This
There’s a whisper in my ear. “I can’t do this,” it says. I’ve heard that voice all my life. Sometimes it speaks softly, sometimes it hisses, and sometimes it shouts. In the first days of...
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Expectations
I’m hacking into the New Year. Struck down on Christmas Day with a cold and fever, and pushing through the fog ever since. From my sick bed, I watch the New Year roll into New York City....
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Shepherd to shepherd
On November 26 our twelfth grandchild entered the world. It occurred, appropriately, just hours before Thanksgiving. Our son sent a picture of our brand new grandson cradled in his arms m...
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When Thanksgiving Doesn’t Come
Thanksgiving tangled with unanswered prayers. I slumped against the antiseptic tiled hallway. My stalwart, “Hang on and hold it in,” gave way to unrestrained tears like prisoners let free...
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It is root canal morning. I hate root canals. I’ve got teeth that crumble like coffee cake, fortunately, my dentist is pretty good. I climb into the dental chair and the hygienist recline...
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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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Work Like Martha - Love Like Mary
I am overwhelmed. Too much to do, too many relationships, and too little time. Did Martha feel like this when Jesus told her that Mary had chosen the better part? “Martha was distracted w...
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