Everybody said it wouldn’t be bad at all. No problemo. They’ll knock you out and the painless procedure will be over so quickly you’ll wonder if you ever had a colonoscopy at all, they said. Completely routine medical procedure these days. No muss. No fuss. No sweat. They said. And I believed them. But I ...
Early Morning Grace Notes
Don’t you just love grace notes? I sure do. Papa God sent me a doozy this past weekend. It was just before sunrise when I finished my second lap on the narrow road encircling the rustic campground bordering a lake where I was speaking at a women’s retreat later that day. I’m an early riser ...
It’s Just Good Horse Sense
I was pedaling past an open pasture on my bicycle the other day and came across a remarkable sight. Two horses were standing side-by-side, facing opposite directions, simultaneously scratching each others’ backs. Each was diligently chewing/scraping his teeth along the mid-to-lower back of the other and they both looked like they were about to spout ...
Get Your Bad Self Down
Deb on her He & Me Retreat I think we all reach a point in our lives when fifteen minutes of quiet time in the morning just isn’t cutting it. We’re exhausted physically, frazzled emotionally, and parched spiritually. We need an extended time of renewal in every sense of the word. After nearly completing work ...
Love: Do You Speaka Dat Language?
I arrived home yesterday from a three-week, self-prescribed sabbatical in the seclusion of our remote Smoky mountain cabin, where I was working feverishly to finish Fear, Faith, and a Fistful of Chocolate, my newest book. F3 is due at the end of this week, although it doesn’t debut until Feb. That’s how publishing works: hurry, ...
What’s in a Name?
Rainstorm in the English countryside “This is all your fault!” my unsmiling neighbor leveled at me yesterday as we crossed paths while picking up moss, limbs, and other grungy debris strewn across our yards. “My fault?” “Dang storm’s named after you, isn’t it?” Oh. I suppose it is. This wasn’t the first time I’d heard ...
It’s Your Serve (Prayer, part 2)
Last week we talked about prayer being like a tennis match. You hit the ball over the net, Papa God hits it back. Over and back. Over and back. You know, the truly amazing part is that Papa God wants to play with us at all. I mean, He certainly doesn’t have to. He could ...
Spiritual Punctuation
Effective conversation is like a tennis match. (Yes, you’re absolutely right – this metaphor occurred to me as I was whacking a little yellow ball around a court.) You hit the ball over the net, then your partner hits the ball back. And you keep it going. Back and forth. Back and forth. Prayer is ...
My Favorite Transformer
Last week, I asked my incredibly imaginative Facebook friends to help me come up with a title for a chapter I’m writing about grace for my new inspirational book, Fear, Faith, and a Fistful of Chocolate (set to release in Feb, 2013 by Barbour Books). My creative FB buds had done such a slam bang-up ...
Living in the Shadow of the Hawk
I live in a thickly wooded area and my backyard is home to many critters. Last week we had a very noisy skirmish between the possum clan and red fox tribe that drew Spouse from his nice warm bed to screech like a banshee and whack a baseball bat against the metal door at 3 ...