Sunday afternoon, I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Hidden Brain. While the title was You 2.0: Overcoming Stage Fright, the topic was really dealing with anxiety, or “choking” – like when you choke on a test. This month students are back in the world of school, and their parents are back in […]

Dear Parents,   This is a reality check as your child/children/grandchildren go back to school. Once you complete the exhale that they have gotten on the bus, or into Bar-T, or through the door of preschool without too many tears, what is it that you most hope for your child this school year? I know […]

As I’ve mentioned on many occasions, Traci Smith is brilliant! In her book, Faithful Families she gives us lots of different ways to recognize important seasons, milestones and other times of a family’s life throughout the year. The Back-to-School observance is beautiful and is designed for kids from preschool up through high school.   You […]

I’m sure there are lots of definitions of faithfulness, some extremely complicated and some extremely simply. I prefer my definitions simple. My definition of faithfulness is based on four ideas::   God created everything for good God is actively at work in our world each and every day God loves all of us more than […]

Gentleness as a characteristic is not something we prize in 2022. Gentleness coupled with humility is particularly held in contempt. This is odd because so many of the people our society holds up as paragons of virtue were both – Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa to name a few. These people were […]

“He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does God require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8   Kindness is, according to www.inspirekindness.com, “being selfless, caring, compassionate and unconditionally kind. Like love, it takes practice to understand and feel it. We […]

Patience is not a characteristic that we often associate with children, particularly not children in 2022. One of the reasons for this is that many of us no longer teach children HOW to be patient; probably because it takes a fair bit of time and patience on the part of the parents, both of which […]

A couple of weeks ago, in the mindfulness exercise on peace, we imagined we were in a room with a small puppy. We wanted the puppy to come sit in our lap. For that to happen, we needed to become very calm, to slow ourselves down far enough that the puppy wouldn’t just come play […]

When I think about awakening joy, I must say, self-control is NOT the first thing I think about. In fact, it would be pretty far down the list. But James Baraz made me think of it differently.   The book I’ve been using for these messages, Awakening Joy, is mostly a book about mindfulness. “Mindfulness […]

When I was a little girl peace meant the absence of war. As I got older, I learned that there are many ways people use and sometimes misuse the word peace. Peace means different things in different parts of the Bible too. Sometimes peace does mean the absence of war. Sometimes it means Shalom – […]