This week, I realized I am once again late to the party - the Friendsgiving party. It seems this festivity has been rapidly gaining popularity in our culture, and although I was initially among those so-called skeptics who surmised this was one more opportunity to remove God from the season, I soon came to realize it can easily be considered an extension of Thanksgiving. Friends are such a valuable and necessary part of life, and the gift of friendship is a rich blessing to treasure and offer up gratitude for. "Make new friends but keep the old; one is silver and the other is gold." For many years, a picture with these words hung on the wall, welcoming friends to our home. I'm not sure who authored this quote, but it's long been a favorite. Opportunities for friendship have Continue Reading
Hope for the Weary Writer
Are you a writer? Then chances are you've experienced moments, days and even months of being just plain weary. "Weary" is the dilemma of every writer at some point. We pull words from deep places and pour them out, shaping and crafting sentences meant to bring hope and encouragement to our readers. Every moment spent living becomes an opportunity to write. A common thread to connect one soul to another. Because we want to make a difference... We strive to lighten another's burden with fresh insight. We long to sprinkle joy where there is sorrow. We yearn to offer strength to the heavy-hearted. We ache to show the way... to grace and mercy and hope. We live to plant seeds of encouragement. And along the journey, sometimes, we find ourselves weary and worn. Hope stretched Continue Reading
5 Ways to Kickstart Your Hopes & Dreams
What if the most important thing our hopes and dreams need is a kickstart? I’ve mentioned in a previous post that after 22 years, we are selling our home. It’s something we’ve dreamed of for a decade, but with a large family and a rollercoaster economy, there was always something keeping us from listing it. Isn't that just the way it is when it comes to stepping into the one thing we really desire? By the time you read this, we’ll be packing the truck and changing zip codes. It’s not a huge location change, but it is a huge personal change. One that is very exciting because the market is good, and this positions us in a better financial standing for our future. One that’s scary because there’s a certain element of security and normal that is lost in letting go of what we hold Continue Reading
Build Your Legacy With Hopefulness Check-Points
Hopefulness is not a given. It’s something that must be nurtured and cultivated, especially in terms of how we live out our life plan and build our legacy. A committment to hopefulness makes all the difference between giving up or pressing on when difficult circumstances become a threat to successfully living out our life plan. Realizing the potential for any plan to get derailed allows us to put measures in place which give us staying power, strength for the long haul and perspective for the difficult times. These measures also create ways for us to keep fear and depression at bay and focus our attention on moving forward instead of getting stuck in the present or the past. Put simply, hopefulness is the anticipation of a greater tomorrow. One of the best ways to Continue Reading