A few days ago, I decided to take a pre-sunrise prayer walk. As you may recall, I’m a ridiculously early riser (we’re talking the 4:30 a.m. range), but I gave up excursions in the wee hours many years ago, largely due to close encounters of the nocturnal critter kind (our rural subdivision is bordered by ...
Thankful Through Tears
It was time this week to say goodbye to an old friend. And to reflect on the grace notes from Papa God that enabled this precious 30-year friendship to exist in the first place. When we were house-hunting three decades ago, the first thing I saw when we peeked into the neglected backyard of one ...
Flab is Drab
So here I am, five weeks into my annual six-week weight loss adventure. Yep, from January 1 through Valentine’s Day (February 14) each year, I suck it up and whip myself back into shape by exercising a little self-discipline (not my best gift). True, exercising does have something to do with achieving my 15-pound weight ...
Blabber Control Issues
“Keep your mouth shut, and you will stay out of trouble” ~ Proverbs 21:23 NLT I was playing a friendly game of pickleball a few weeks ago with a nice lady I’d just met. Our opponents were two overly aggressive cavemen (you know the type – winning is EVERYTHING and there really is no such ...
Tickling the Ivories
Ever do something for so long that it becomes a part of you and you don’t think about it anymore? That’s the way I am about teaching piano – after 40 years it’s just an integral part of my DNA and I don’t even remember to report it when newly met folks ask what I ...
Pebbles
Something amazing happened to me this week. No, that’s not the right word. Incredible? Shocking? Supernatural? How about all of the above? Here’s how it went down. As I sat in a cold, sterile treatment room praying that Papa God would somehow turn bad news into good, the Pulmonologist entered, sat on her little black ...
Lean It And Mean It
For the past decade, each New Year’s Day, I’ve been choosing a special word for the upcoming year. Many folks do this, do you? I like to sticky-note it to my work space just above my computer so I’ll see it every day. I’ve found my word to be very helpful in keeping me motivated ...
Treasure Them in Your Heart
My Christmas wish to you, my dearest BFFs (Blessed Friends Forever), is that your celebration of the birth of our Savior Jesus Christ is filled with awe and wonder. That’s the true “magic” of Christmas, isn’t it? So here’s an excerpt just for you from my 365-day devotional, Too Blessed to be Stressed: 3-Minute Daily ...
Coaching Counts
Like many of you, I’ve spent much of my life learning important skills from coaches – a patient middle school softball coach; my high school tennis coach; the wonderful choir director who attempted to tune me for years; a longsuffering Christian who nurtured my spiritual growth as a pesky adolescent; the therapist who trained me ...
Manna Nails
“If Papa God tells you to build a shed, He’ll provide the nails.” That’s a quote from one of my Too Blessed to be Stressed books from nearly a decade ago. At the time I wrote it, I had no inkling of the awful, interfering, sometimes debilitating stress we would encounter while building our assigned sheds ...