Gaining a heart of wisdom
For a family with four sons, close in age like little stairsteps, it seems impossible to fly under the radar. In restaurants, other customers would approach our table with compliments about boys who ate salad or boys who managed themselves politely. We may have heard more than our share of admonitions to "enjoy this stage… Continue reading How Your Imperfect Family Can Make an Eternal Impact
We are covered to the elbows in red and green paint, but the festive wrapping paper stretched out to dry on the table before us more than justifies the mess. The toddler points to his distinctively tiny handprints and smiles his satisfaction, as his older brothers start wondering aloud about cocoa with candy cane stirrers.… Continue reading To the Woman Who Feels Crowded by Christmas
The Wednesday before Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite days of the entire year. It's all about preparation: rolling pie crust, making yeast rolls, peeling vegetables, boiling cranberries, and assembling the traditional turkey stuffing with lots of celery. With Handel's Messiah blasting in the background, I pour a year's worth of gratitude into… Continue reading Are You Giving Thanks for Your Changing Family—and Your Changing Holidays?
Marriage and family are two gifts God has graciously granted to me—even though I didn't have the optimism or good sense to pray for them. Perhaps that's why I am now so grateful for the privilege of being a wife and mother. Maybe that's why I am awestruck with every announcement of another grandchild on… Continue reading Look at All Your Blessings Through Eyes of Wonder
A hymnal is one of the books I use almost daily in my devotional routine, and I love Thanksgiving hymns in November. Their tried and true words and melodies call up visions of harvested fields, gatherings around a loaded table, and God's "countless gifts of love." I learned one of my favorite Thanksgiving hymns in… Continue reading Thank God for What He’s Given You Now
A beat-up black three-ring binder holds the record of 35 gardening years. I turn to it every spring because it remembers where the tomatoes grew last summer. It reminds me of the serendipitous genius of planting the peas next to the fence—a ready-made trellis! It helps me to foil the ravenous beetles by keeping me… Continue reading Life in the Garden on Your Bit of Earth
When Kay Warren's son took his own life, she was, of course, devastated. She knew this was a risk because he had suffered from clinical depression since the age of eight and had been voicing thoughts of suicide since the age of twelve. She had faithfully told him they couldn't give up hope, and she… Continue reading Singing the Song of the First Thanksgiving
(...and a new Christmas fiction book just for fun!) The first Sunday of Advent is less than a month away! What will you do this year to celebrate, reflect, and renew your sense of awe that God the Son would hunker down and wizen up and enter the darkness of this world? The incarnation is… Continue reading Four New Resources for Your Advent Reflection
November ushers in my favorite holiday. It's the Gratitude Season—days for making a conscious effort to say "Thank YOU!" to God for all the blessings, big and small, that we take for granted most of the time. Psalm 118 begins with gratitude for God's goodness and mercy, and then proceeds to give evidence to back… Continue reading Most of All, Thank You for Being God
In his iconic poem "How to Be a Poet," Wendell Berry sums up all of creation in one lovely sentence: There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places." He cuts directly to the chase of our persistently false categories and my own personal tendency to desecrate the sacred by forgetting… Continue reading The Importance of Prayer in a Sacred Life
Living Our Days 