(1 minute, 56 seconds) A new acquaintance asked if I had written a book. Though not yet published, my manuscript, Shuffle If You Must: Lessons of Perseverance from Along the Broken Road, is finished. I described it to this person as my offering to suffering sisters and shared with her one…
A Creative Weight Loss Technique, and Itching Ears
1 minute, 42 seconds Our tiny cottage rental was charming in every way except for one nearly undetectable flaw: sloped floors. I never would have noticed if it weren’t for the cheap scale I bought to help keep our eating honest while we worked remotely. Floor space in our little…
Five Things to Cultivate Joy
2 minutes, 18 seconds Joy is one of those things we all long for, but without practical tools and real application, it can feel elusive. I recently shared three truths about joy based on Galatians 5:22 in A Settled Disposition. We don’t try to manufacture joy through the right techniques;…
Found at the Crossroads
1 minute, 51 seconds Saltine crackers. That’s all I had in my cupboards that seemed anything close to acceptable to feed four abandoned and hungry puppies one summer day. About half a mile into my daily walk, at the gravel crossroads between Robey’s hog farm and the house with the…
A Settled Disposition
1 minute, 50 seconds My college degrees were in Athletic Training and Fitness. Early in my career, I taped a lot of football players’ ankles, and over the last two and a half decades, I’ve trained many clients as a personal trainer. I particularly remember one client—a fifty-year-old librarian—who told…
Who You Are Because of Whose You Are
(2 minutes, 43 seconds) I met a new friend not long ago—one of those rare, instant connections that defies explanation. Kelly told me that her earliest memories as a little girl were of boldly approaching people, looking up into their faces, studying their features, and wondering if they might be…
Mom’s Hands
(2 minutes, 3 seconds) It would have been my mom’s 86th birthday this week. As a very young girl I sat next to my mother on Sunday mornings on the hard wooden pew of our country church. I remember two things about sitting beside her: first, her awesome fur coat,…
Beautiful, Everlasting Love
(1 minute, 43 seconds) Nothing stirs my heart quite like hearing sisters and brothers bear testimony to the goodness and grace of God in their lives. It’s a joy like no other to be the recipient of the sharing of another’s faith journey. While my husband and I were working…
My Soul’s Whisper
(1 minute, 18 seconds) I have the opening verses of Psalm 18 framed and hanging in our dining room—a central place in our home because it’s a Psalm that centers me. “I love you, O Lord, my strength.The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer.He is my…
Never a Zonk from God
1 minute, 28 seconds Do you remember the television game show Let’s Make a Deal? Selected members of the studio audience, called “traders,” made deals with the host, Monty Hall. Each trader was offered a prize and then given the choice of keeping it or exchanging it for a different…