Thoughtful Thursdays

It's that time of year again. The calendar says there's only one more day left in the old year. Facebook keeps trying to show me my year in review. Friends on there are all posting about hopes for 2017, fresh starts, saying farewell to the old. I've always loved to...

I had planned to have something brilliant and insightful to blog about today. I intended to think about this yesterday. Instead I . . . * Took my cat to the vet and ended up leaving her there overnight. Poor kitty has an impacted bowel and needed an enema. =( * Spent...

If this autumn has hammered anything home in the United States, it's that everyone has an opinion. Not that I didn't already know this, but seriously. I heard more opinions this election cycle than I can ever recall witnessing before. Every time we touched a toe into...

Well, here we are, on the other side of the election. The results are in, the new president is declared, and some less-than-peaceful protests are under way. I have friends who are gloating, friends who are weeping, and friends (the vast majority) who say something...

I admit it--I'm sick of it. All the politics on the news, the divisiveness, the fact that I can't go on Facebook without my friends' feed being an explosion of vitriolic "Who I'm voting for and why" posts. It makes me tired. But more, it makes me sad. And here's why....

Our Bible studies are famous for getting off track . . . but resulting in some awesome discussions. Last night our study of Daniel led us to a conversation on why people might lose faith--why, specifically, God might put them in a situation where they end up losing...

I'm not sure when this thought hit me--but it was in the last month or so. One of those things that has niggled and wiggled around in my head and then burst into realization during a sermon in church one week. I'd been wondering about blessings . . . and if we really...

As a writer, I know all about picking the interesting times to write about--we leave out the boring stuff, right? Or the unimportant stuff. We certainly don't spend pages describing something that will never come up again. It's something I've noticed in biblical...

I just got back from a couple days at a church conference, and the director said something in one of his presentations that resonated with something my husband and I had been discussing too. And that is this: One of the greatest perceived failings of the modern church...

A few weeks ago, I heard an analogy about the kind of life we should live; that we should be an oak tree, solid and tall, a pillar of the community, the kind of person people respect and will miss when we're gone, etc. That we shouldn't be a tumbleweed, aimless and...

Life is hard. So often we feel pressure. People are pushing us. Prodding us. Poking us. Sometimes, when circumstances are weighing heavy, we get that tight feeling in our chest, right? Or in our stomach. Stress. Overwhelm. We get tired. We get frustrated. We react....

It's a busy week here in the White House. David's birthday was on Sunday (and I'd like to give a big shout-out of thanks to the Penguins for winning the Stanley Cup that day, which made a fantastic birthday present for that die-hard fan. When they won, I looked over...

When I got married, I filled out a registry. A wish list. It had on it all the things one would expect--dishes and cookware, sheets and towels. All of them, sets. Matching. Off-white plates with flowers around the edges. Matching cups. A set of cutlery. Glasses that...

I daresay we've all read Philippians 4:8-9. I know I've read it many times. I've heard it quoted. I've read bloggers and reviewers who make it their mantra . . . and occasionally I have been seriously irritated when people condemn something using this as their excuse....

Back in the early days of my publishing career, my only books were from WhiteFire. Which is, of course, our company. This meant that in those first years, I knew of pretty much each sale. Individually. I could track my every effort to know which ones were working....

My Monday started out pretty normal--I was editing Giver of Wonders, which made me two minutes late to get our homeschool day started. Had a load of laundry in. As soon as morning classes were done, I ran to get dressed, get the garbage down to the end of the...

I got up this morning and realized it was Thursday. Time to get thoughtful. I opened my blog. Drew up a clean post. And sat. Staring. Waiting for inspiration to strike. Sometimes I know days or weeks in advance what I want to write about on Thursdays. Sometimes I even...

It's no secret that there are a lot of different types of people in the world. That we all have different personalities. Different outlooks. That there introverts and extroverts and whole personality-naming-systems with letters to label each part of your personality....

(First, I'd like to apologize for my blog being abandoned this week--we've had internet connectivity issues, and though I thought I posted, it didn't go through, apparently...so those posts will just be saved until next week, LOL.) In our homeschool Bible reading,...

In October, my husband David and father went to Bulgaria. Their goal was the refugee camp in Harmanli, on the Turkish/Bulgarian border. Their purpose was to interview Syrian refugees and learn their story. The result is a short film called Along the Path. Where my...

I know, I know. Every blogger in the whole blogosphere is reflecting now on the exit of 2015 and the entrance of her baby sister. But under the firm belief that reflection is good for the soul, I must join in. 😉 As I look back over 2015, I see a year full to...

  It's officially the advent season. The time of year when decorations are everywhere you turn, where cheerful lights proclaim Christmas around the corner, where you expect smiles from your fellow man and sales in the stores and happy greetings to be upon lips....

My husband came home one evening a while back with quite a story to tell. He'd met a friend of ours at a local Christian restaurant--a blatantly Christian restaurant, mind you, with a Christian name and which is decorated with nothing but Christian art. They were...

I'm an educator. A home educator, if we're being precise. Every day at 9 o'clock my kids bounce out to the kitchen table, open their books, and say, "Come on, Mama, you're going to be late. Start reading." Every day, I read to them. We read the Bible. We read history....