No one wants stress, anxiety, and fear. The exceptions might include daredevils and those who enjoy being frightened. For them, daily life might be mingled with boredom and traces of emptiness. The jolt makes them feel alive. The rest of us would be fine without the jolts and background jitters. But your anxiety has its advantages. Anxiety speaks important truth. Anxiety sees the fragility of...
The new year is often a time to take stock of our lives. As we look back over 2020 and look forward to the year to come, most of us will be acutely aware that there are some habits in our lives that we want to keep and other things that we’d love to change. After all, the past twelve months have brought us all a heady mix of things to celebrate and things that have left us reeling, maybe even...
More than twenty-five years ago, Miss Mary Lou challenged my teen Sunday School class, “If you say you believe the Bible, you should know what is in it.” Someone had given her that challenge forty years before, and she rose to meet it. She read the Bible cover to cover. That morning, she sought to inspire another generation with her testimony. It worked. My New Year’s resolution was set. I would...
Goodbye, 2020. Adios. Arrivederci. Au revoir. Sayonara. Good riddance. Get outta here and don’t come back, you hear? I don’t know anyone who will regret giving a hearty goodbye to this arduous, grievous, and all-around unpredictable year. A viral pandemic spanned the globe, killing nearly 2 million people and sickening tens of millions more. Economic strife followed on COVID’s heels as...
Does your child struggle with jealousy from time to time? The best time to talk with children is when they are not actually jealous. When they are, children don’t listen well, and parents are impatient. But this can be a time when parents and children talk about an experience common to us all. And that conversation is a gift: to talk about something we all struggle with and to talk about it...
