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Encouragement for every season of lifeBook Review: Don’t Follow Your Dreams and 39 Other Life Lessons I’ve Learned Along the Way by Charles Porter
Hot off the digital presses, I just read the new publication by missionary, world traveler, and life-long learner, Charles Porter, titled Don't Follow Your Dreams and 39 Other Life Lessons I've Learned Along the Way. He shares an anthology of personal stories and life...
Distracting Laugh
Do you have a distracting laugh? “Jolene’s laugh is really distracting.” That comment on a class evaluation took me off guard. As a public speaker and teacher, I have received a lot of interesting comments and feedback over the years, but no one has ever criticized my...
Staying Fit Through the Holidays
Staying fit and healthy through the holidays is more about your motivation and one small (but effective) trick than checking off a list of to-dos. Before you read on, ask yourself why you want to stay (or get) fit this season. Are you going on vacation? Do you want to...
It Is Positively Difficult to Stay Positive
I pulled out of the driveway and pushed the CD into the player. Today, it wasn’t music; today, it was Norman Vincent Peale’s book, The Power of Positive Thinking. On a typical day my drive to work takes about 15 minutes but once I hit the main road, I could see...
Teenager’s Double Duty Desk
She’d wanted a desk for her room for some time - my younger daughter, Julia, that is. We didn’t have a big budget, but every once in a while we’d look. We just hadn’t found the right thing at the right price. Then one day as we browsed together in a local resale shop,...
The Fear of Failure
While playing hide and seek as a kid, I discovered a bomb in our closet. Well…kind of. I was seven years old. My younger brother, who was six at the time, and I decided to hide from our mom while she was on the phone so she would have to find us when she hung up. We...
Mismatched Silverware
At Christmas time I love to decorate, and cook, and be creative! I’m really not into it at any other time of the year but at Christmas, it’s the season when all the details make a difference -- or so I thought. It’s been my goal that my house and home would look and...
When You Are Quietly Drowning
Drowning. It isn't like the movies - no flailing arms, no loud screaming, no thrashing about. Instead, it is insidiously quiet. Drowning is a silent struggle, without wild movements to draw attention, and ends with the victim simply, finally slipping under the water....
Let Your Yes Be Yes
It’s almost Christmas, the most wonderful time of the year! So how is it that on one Christmas Day I ended up crying on the floor of an I-94 rest stop bathroom? I was the Goldilocks of Christmas until I learned to say “no.” This Christmas is Much Too Hard It seems...
Leading Your Family into 2015
There’s something about this time of year! As this year begins to come to a close, we reflect on the past year to remember all we are thankful for and look to the next for all that it will hold. Every year at about this time, I feel a tugging in my heart to seek God...
