Sometimes in my mommying years I could be a bit of a bonehead.  I wasn’t very wise about self-care.  But I earnestly felt that my children were my primary mission field. I made that determination when I was pregnant with my first.  And when that pregnancy ended in the...

“You are my God.  My times are in your hands.”  Psalm 31:14-15

Are these words comforting or disturbing to you?  Do you feel tyrannized and victimized by time?  Do you get to the end of a day and feel disappointed by all that you tried to accomplish but...

No matter what our eyes see, God is still in charge.  He loves his creation…ALL of it.  I can worship Him best by not holding any of it in contempt. 

But that is SO much easier said than done.  If I look too long at the behavior of those in the world around me, I can...

Like so many, I was moved by the sight of 28,000 Haitian refugees huddled under a bridge at the border town of Del Rio, Texas.  The image of ICE agents on horseback whipping the asylum seekers was disturbing, to say the least.   

Writer Katja Vujic said in her article “How to...

“Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong:
For like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away.”...

In 2011 a strange series of events and meetings brough my family to lunch at the home of John and Lady Carolyn Warren on the Highclere Estate in England, the estate where sits the castle of “Downton Abbey.”  Lady Carolyn is the sister of the current Lord Carnarvon.  Carolyn...

As executor of my mother’s will, I meticulously set about distributing her possessions to my sister and children.  I made a catalogue of everything she owned and circulated it so that each in turn could make his or her choices as mom’s legal document specified.  After that,...

Every so often I feel the irresistible urge to purge.  Not in the way that some people do a cleanse for dietary purposes.  I purge my belongings.  I have to!  I find myself amassing things at an alarming rate.  Some of my recent acquisitions come from inheritances from my...

I’m a summer gardener. The area around our lake cottage is lush from storms and thick humidity. It’s the opposite of arid Southern California, where we live the rest of the year.  In Michigan, I rarely need to water anything but my window boxes dressed in their annual color....

This week I’ve done a lot of driving.  I drove from Michigan to Nashville, on a book promotional journey to MomCon.  Once back in Epworth I drove to the airport and back to pick up my husband who flew in to help me close cottages and drive back across the country.  We left...