As I write, I am babysitting our youngest grandchild while his parents close on their first home. Packed in a one-bedroom apartment with a baby for the past 8 months, the two of them are eager to move! Soon they’ll start preparing the new house for their growing family. No doubt, they are excited with …
As noted earlier, my mom recently moved into assisted living to be near family. It was a good decision and she’s starting to reap its benefits, some of which include her getting to see grandchildren, and even one of her great grandchildren, in person! She also never has to cook, clean, or do her own …
Half-hearted. Unsure. Doubtful. Apathetic. Lukewarm. If you saw those words on someone’s resume, would you give a double thumbs up, saying, “YES! That’s exactly the profile for people I want on my team”? No! And similarly, God is looking for people who are “all in.” For the eyes of the LORD move to and fro …
We took off over a month from writing this blog due to unexpected changes in our lives. As is His style, God is working it all together for good. But my (Carrie’s) mom suddenly landed in the hospital in her home state. Within two whirlwind weeks (for which I flew there), she got a pacemaker …
A neighbor up the street added a new puppy–a cockapoo–to their family. She trained their pup to ring a bell when it needed to go to the bathroom. At first they positioned its paw or its nose to help it ring the bell at the door whenever it needed to go out. Eventually it learned …
A memorable movie line spoken by the character Yoda in “The Empire Strikes Back” exhorts, “Try not! Do or do not, there is no try.” The apparent point was the statement—”I’ll try”—which conveys a lack of confidence and commitment, basically assuming failure before even making an attempt. In contrast, one of my dad’s many aphorisms …
Do you ever get annoyed when it turns out you were wrong? I find my assumptions, conclusions, and guesses to be wrong more often than I’d like. It’s humbling. In the business world, one “soft skill” employers like to see in a prospective employee is a willingness to learn. I’m sorry to say that for …
What have you been thinking about so far today? We seldom consider the path our minds take on a given day; we just get up and go. We’re often thinking about what’s ahead, and far too frequently those thoughts are laced with anxiety. How can we meet this need? How should we handle that challenging …
My wife is a woman of vision. She has amazing spiritual insights, but she also carries a practical and aesthetic vision for rooms in our home. One place that’s been in development lately is our basement gym. Recent enhancements include two strong resistance bands, equipped with handles and ankle straps, that we clip onto wall-mounted …
What does the name Thomas Edison bring to mind? Or Abraham Lincoln? How would you describe Walt Disney, Lucille Ball, or Michael Jordan? If you read their biographies, you’ll find they all had one thing in common—multiple failures! Yet when someone mentions a name like Oprah Winfrey, no one says, “Oh, you mean that woman …
