encouragement for every season of life
Slowly, I slid down the wall while tears slid down my face. I glanced at the clock that read 9:10 am. The day was young, but I needed a serious do-over. I rubbed my tired head and thought about the last few weeks. As the calendar wound down on my husband’s deployment, my short fuse tightened up. My health struggles…
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To put it bluntly, there are seasons when it’s just dang hard being a person. And for this person here, seasons when I often feel this way are seasons when I struggle to fit in. At the beginning of this new year, we may feel that way on a broad political scale. And if we narrow down this notion of fitting in to a…
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We didn’t get all the snow our weatherman predicted, but I awoke this morning to a gray, pea-soup fog, the frosty kind that leaves the evergreens glazed head to toe. The fog stayed for a while, long enough for me to give the boys two extra warnings about driving to school. Go a little more slowly, please, since you can’t see too…
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If there’s one school subject that still makes me sweat bullets and my heart rate gallop, it’s math. Please, for the love of all that’s good and holy, don’t make me do math beyond what is required to measure ingredients or compile a grocery list. But when reading Chip and Joanna’s The Magnolia Story over Christmas break, I was intrigued by a section where Chip…
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‘Round these parts, we’re all about getting fresh air where we can, when we can. After all, the world can be one deflating, stifling place, as 2016 can testify. I am not one who typically makes New Year’s resolutions. It is more in line with my personality to look at the new calendar year and ask myself questions like my friend Lisa-Jo…
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As you move about your holiday activity both hurried and hushed, may you be aware of Christ around you. As you hold the monumental and minute in your heart like Mary, may you know Christ in you. As you open unexpected gifts great and small, may you know Christ for you. The Christmas spirit is that hope which tenaciously clings…
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Yesterday afternoon, I drove down the stretch of highway to the Air Force Academy, on my way to the base commissary. I needed to get some final Christmas groceries, including some appetizer fixings for Christmas day as well as ingredients for sugar cookies. As I approached the gate guard at the base entrance, I slowed down and turned down the…
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With winter more present in Colorado than not, I spend most of my early mornings mummified in a fleece blanket on the corner of my sofa next to our gas stove. As I will my sleepy eyes to wake, I warm my hands around my cup of pumpkin chai (made with half almond milk and half Tazo pumpkin chai found…
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As an upper elementary and middle school kid, I played softball. Or rather, I tried to play softball. I quickly discovered my talents didn’t show up extraordinary in that sport, unlike my sisters. Both of them were terrific softball players, as is testimony to their primo field positions of pitcher and first baseman. Me? I was always in right or left field;…
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Well, we’ve had some kind of week, haven’t we? I tried to do some house-y things on the day after election day, but I kept looking away from the task at hand to stare outside windows. Sometime later I stepped away from the internet’s words and looked into the Word. I re-read, “And he is before all things, and in him…
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As I’ve mentioned just once or twice (grin), our house is under construction and has been since we moved here in July. What can I say? Same song, 37th verse. And while our amazing contractor (whom we adore!) is overseeing the building of our addition and several other updates, there are a few other smallish projects we’re handling ourselves. One such project included updating the fireplace…
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During our time as a military family, we blew into a new town every three years or so. Anxious to wrap my babies (and myself) in some sense of normalcy, I would set up house lickety-split, or as quickly as I could. When my kids were little, success looked like unpacking a box or two a day or dangling a…
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