5 Truths I Know About You (But You May Not Know About Yourself There are (at least) five truths I want my children, nieces, and nephews to know about themselves. As I pondered this list, I realized you might need to hear them, too. So I invite you to read this list and insert yourself as the recipient. To those …
Finding Love to Spare in the Selfishness of Grief
Have you noticed that grief makes even the happiest memories hard? This is a picture of my Dad, Tim. He passed away on February 28, 2014. I have a million, billion happy memories of my father, maybe more. Before I say more, let me acknowledge that while my dad was one of the good ones, yours maybe wasn’t. Surely that …
Why Being Unique is Overrated
I’m not a neat freak. Truly, I’m not. I’m perfectly comfortable with a level of disorganization and clutter that would make some of you insane. Even though I’m not over the top about it, I do love the way our living room looks when everything is in its place. The room is quite pretty when there are no dirty socks, …
I Hope You Never Find Contentment
For a long time, I believed I was supposed to be content. I thought contentment meant maturing beyond my consumerism, greed, gluttony, and selfishness. I thought contentment was the natural outpouring of gratitude and the embodiment of joy. Contentment was so important to me, I tried to talk myself into it. I would mentally list all the amazingly wonderful parts …
Why I Stopped Asking If I Measure Up
Do you ever find it hard to look in the mirror and really look at yourself? It makes sense to me that it’s hard to face our mistakes and confront the worst parts of ourselves. Acknowledging those aspects of our lives can be painful. But, why is it hard to believe the good stuff about ourselves?
What I Learned in a Jungle in Nicaragua
Have you ever done a mission trip? It’s a fairly new experience for me, but as this post goes up on the site, I’m in Nicaragua on my third trip. (And I already have an idea of when my fourth trip will be — email me for information on how to join the team for July 2015.) There are a …
The Biggest Obstacle to Living Loved and How to Overcome It
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what keeps me (and you) from living loved. It can be summed up as simply as “life.” But, like most superficial and overly-simplified answers, this isn’t very helpful. For me, the biggest obstacle to living loved is this—I know myself.
Acceptance Doesn’t Mean Forgetting
This week’s post is about grief, but it’s also about parenting and learning from our children. Like last week, if you would rather not read about grief, I understand — I would rather not write about it. But maybe you too are grieving and this will bring you some comfort. I hope that in the midst of whatever feelings you …
Living Loved In Grief
This week’s post is straight from my heart, but it is definitely not light-hearted. If you would rather not read about grief, I understand — I would rather not write about it. But maybe you’re struggling, too. Maybe you’ve taken on the guilt of an answered prayer and you need to read this. If so, I hope this helps you …
Life is Like A Game of Frogger
I love video games. Not the new fancy xBox type games, but old school Namco and Konami games. In fact, for my birthday a couple of years ago my husband gave me an arcade style Ms. Pac-Man. (He’s a true romantic, Ms. Pac-Man eats heart-shaped pellets. ❤) It has more than Ms. Pac-Man, it has all the classics. Over the …