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Overcoming My Excuses

2 min

Overcoming My Excuses

I have a fight with myself every day. Every day I tell myself to go for a walk. But then the excuses slip in the door. “It’s cold and windy.” “I have too much to do.” “I’m tired and need a nap.” Yesterday that fight went on for an hour and fifteen minutes. Ridiculous. Whether or not I need the exercise is not as important as the primary reason I walk: prayer. I have been prayerwalking for my community for over 22 years. My book PrayerWalk: Becoming a Woman of Prayer, Strength

Finding the Up Side in this Year's Downs

4 min

Finding the Up Side in this Year's Downs

A year of ups and downs, huh? “Ups?” you say? Yes, despite what’s happened, I am determined to keep #lookingup. A year ago Sunday I flew home from several days visiting with my brother and his wife, who live in Palm Desert CA. While I’d heard of the coronavirus before flying there, I had no idea the impact it would make on the whole world and life as we had known it. I should have had a clue when my flights into and out of Palm Springs were nearly empty. I loved having a whol

Just Do It

3 min

Just Do It

Halfway into the closet months of COVID last year, I found myself just paralyzed. I seemingly couldn’t put one foot in front of the other writing-wise. There were many things I wanted to get done, but while I did manage to write blogs daily, nothing else got crossed off my mental list. So I sought the help of my writing coach. Even before our phone meeting, she had prayed for me and asked God for his words of counsel for me. In our conversation she encouraged me and asked how

The Oxymoronic Prayer

2 min

The Oxymoronic Prayer

When I taught high school English, Romeo and Juliet provided many an example of the oxymoron–a short figure of speech that has contradictory terms. Romeo (about Rosaline): “Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all. Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love. Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate…” Romeo again (about Rosaline): “Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health, Still-waking sleep that is not what it is!” Juliet (on learning of Romeo’s murder of Ty

How do you say Grace?

2 min

How do you say Grace?

I am betting more people than normal will be using the word “grace” this week. “Will you say the grace?” After all, some kind of giving of thanks is expected for thanks-giving day, right? Dictionary.com provides insight into the English origin of the word. It was first recorded in 1125–75 in Middle English, taken from Old French, which came from the Latin grātia, meaning “favor, kindness, esteem,” as a derivative of grātus “pleasing.” The English teacher in me kept reading, a

When the Power Goes Out

2 min

When the Power Goes Out

Yesterday I was in such a funk. Because of winds up to 70 mph, the power went off around 10:30 in the morning and remained off all day and into the evening. While most others here in our mountain valley have woodstoves for their heat, we rely on electricity. People think we’re nuts, but years ago when we built the house we had an asthmatic baby boy, and his doctor recommended we not use wood heat to keep the air cleaner. Part of my concern was, of course, the food in the frid

Finding that Elusive Peace

2 min

Finding that Elusive Peace

Christmas is coming, and as I find myself making a Christmas list for my immediate family of 20, plus other family and friends, I remember again what my mom used to say when we kids asked her what she wanted for Christmas. “Peace and quiet.” She never said it as a joke. She was dead serious. I am the oldest of five. With my sister Nan’s passing five years ago next month, I have two brothers and a sister. There was a lot of racket in our family of seven. A year younger, Nan an

Finding Hope

2 min

Finding Hope

Hope: n. desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment I can have hope for a good future because I trust God. I do not put my hope in men or women, all of whom are fallible. All make mistakes. All say dumb things. All inflict hurt one way or another. Instead, I can maintain hope in God, because he is worthy of my trust. Trust: n. assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something I trust God because his character is good. I’

From Anger to Forgiveness

2 min

From Anger to Forgiveness

Ever had someone cuss you out in a nonstop blue streak of the worst possible names? I have. I tell you, teachers put up with a lot. When I gave a kid (who was also rude and sassy) a low grade because zilch effort had gone into an assignment, his mother made an appointment with me. I had a hunch what might lie ahead, so I asked both my administrator and a teaching peer to sit in on the conversation. It was more like a confrontation. Every awful word in the book was screamed at

Crumbs and Conversation: Where Healing Starts

2 min

Crumbs and Conversation: Where Healing Starts

Jesus included everyone in the conversation. He spoke with a Samaritan woman–who wasn’t part of the Jewish faith in-crowd, being half-Jew and half-Gentile. He spoke with a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years–also considered unclean by the religious leaders of the time. He spoke with a Canaanite woman–who would have been part of a group of people who served other gods. Reading the passage about the Canaanite woman today in Matthew 15, I had to pause and reflect: Do I

That Kind of God

2 min

That Kind of God

Scripture says that God will reign over the earth. When I think about figurehead kings and queens around the world, I wonder how others view that scripture. My God is not a figurehead. He does not just hold a title with no more authority than today’s royalty that cuts ribbons and waves to a crowd affectively. My God is not the sum total of someone’s fashionable cross piece of jewelry. He created the stones and jewels and wood in that necklace. My God is not something that is

Coping with Compassion Fatigue

2 min

Coping with Compassion Fatigue

As a board member of The Sierra Schools Foundation, I recently helped coordinate efforts to bring social-emotional training to our small school district’s teachers. One term struck me: compassion fatigue. As teachers have doubled up duties to teach both in an in-person setting and in a distance learning model, they have also encountered countless cases of students and parents and peers who are in emotional distress, while these same teachers also try to manage their own famil

How do I Know God has a Calling for Me? Part 3

2 min

How do I Know God has a Calling for Me? Part 3

The last two days I have shared two of the three callings I know that God has laid on me, as well as how they have played out in my life. The first was in 1986 when God called me to a ministry of writing. The second was in 1989 when God called me to the profession of teaching. The third occurred in the fall of 1998. We had just sent our first and second children off to college that September. It felt like a season of new beginnings, except that my health was failing–at my own

How do I Know God has a Calling for Me? Part 2

5 min

How do I Know God has a Calling for Me? Part 2

Yesterday I shared the first of three calls I know God put on my life. The first was this: “I want you to write for me” in 1986. Three years later God gave me a second calling . . . through the odd circumstance of a dream . . . or rather, a nightmare. Lest you think I’m weird, I just want to throw out there that Jesus’s earthly father, Joseph, was also directed to make dramatic changes in his and Mary’s lives because of dreams . . . THREE times, if I remember correctly. The f

Stopping the World's Spin

2 min

Stopping the World's Spin

he greatest torture I could inflict on our gregarious daughter was to banish her to her room. She thrived on the company of others, so making her withdraw from others was the hardest discipline we could inflict when she disobeyed. The Lord God had to allow Israel to be taken captive into a foreign land. The people were going through motions with God. They would ask for God’s counsel, but then disregard any word they found objectionable. Just as a good parent will discipline t

Paying Attention to Warning Signs

2 min

Paying Attention to Warning Signs

Warnings. Words of advice. Gut feelings. Cautionary tales. Do we pay attention? Do I listen to others’ counsel and pay attention to their experiences? As an English teacher I heard students’ arguments against reading fiction: “But it’s not real, Mrs. McHenry. Why should I have to read it?” Here’s my thought: we can either read about others’ experiences and learn from them or we can experience them ourselves. Frankly, I’d rather do the reading. We can learn from Jeremiah’s sto

Finding Hope in a Sea of Blackness

2 min

Finding Hope in a Sea of Blackness

We drove to church yesterday, with a black wall to our right half of the way to Reno. Wildfires licked up just about every spot of green from our place in the Sierra Valley last week almost all the way to the Nevada border. There were miracles of places and human and animal lives saved. Someone even posted a photo of a baby calf sitting in an unburned patch surrounded by burnt pasture. But so much black. While I know in my heart that grasses and even wildflowers will push the

Seeing Past your Own Limitations

2 min

Seeing Past your Own Limitations

What kinds of limitations have you put on yourself? “I’m a woman–that’s a man’s job.” “I didn’t get a college education so . . . “ “My family background is a mess. It is so dysfunctional.” “I’m not strong enough or in good enough physical shape.” “That task isn’t something that syncs with my personality type.” “I’m just not smart enough.” “I’m not attractive.” Well, we’re in good company. Listen to Jeremiah’s conversation with God: “Alas, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not kn

Finding Perfect Peace

2 min

Finding Perfect Peace

I often paint an idyllic picture of my little town with photos that I post on my personal Facebook page. Quaint houses and cute churches. A pretty rose garden. Stunning Sierra Valley photos. But there is some ugliness too. Folks who don’t give a hoot about their yards–with weeds a mile high and junk lying all over. Abandoned buildings crumpling. There is verbal ugliness too. Arguments. Cuss words not just for an occasional emphasis but as the substantive portion of the conver

Weathering the Season

2 min

Weathering the Season

I don’t know another time when I’ve felt I’ve lived just about every line of this famous piece of poetry written by King Solomon from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (ESV): For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to