I long for a good leader. I desperately want to find someone in charge who I can trust; a channel where the news reports just the objective facts, untainted by the political leanings of a news organization. I want a hero, and selfless acts to celebrate.I want someone to stop the madness that is 2020. In the midst of this chaos, I find myself reading my Bible more often than usual. Since the Corona virus started, my church has offered a weekly “Battle Plan” against the virus and the unrest in our world, which involves daily prayers and reading various
Read moreI cannot count how many times I have settled down with my journal to pour out my frustrations and dashed dreams, and within a span of a few pages, find my writing shift into something like praise. It’s not because I’m holy or somehow divinely inspired. It’s because God shows up, time and time again, and speaks truth to my heart as I write. I recognize God’s voice by the sense of peace that comes along with it. It’s the sense that I am moving towards joy. It was October 8, 2016 and our small business was slowly failing. The
Read moreThere is value to simple fun; fun that costs nothing other than free time and a place to play. When I was a kid in the 1970s and 80s, I didn’t play soccer, take ballet, or do art classes. I went to school, came home, played in my yard, and planned various ways to spy on my teenage sisters. I was frequently bored, and had to find creative ways to fill my time, like pretending the rock garden in our back yard was actually a kitchen; or finding a packet of morning glory seeds in my mom’s junk drawer and
Read moreFirst of all, let’s be clear: This is not homeschool. We are six weeks into COVID-19 distance learning and I feel more overwhelmed with educating my kids than I ever did as a homeschool parent. The schools are calling, texting, and messaging repeatedly, with updates, reminders, and new ideas on how to educate our children at home. It’s helpful, and it’s necessary…but it’s also overwhelming. I homeschooled my children for eight years. They’ve been in public school for the last three. With this kind of background, you would think I’d take this change in schooling in stride, but I am here
Read moreI’m excited USA Today published my article on working at the GraceWorks Ministries food pantry during COVID-19. Click here to view it!
Read more
I can’t imagine how disillusioned and disappointed they felt. In one day, their hopes, dreams and plans vanished, as they stared at Jesus, dead on a cross. The one they had given their lives, and their livelihoods, to follow: Dead. In 2020, we have the benefit of knowing that the story doesn’t end with Jesus dying on the cross. That on Easter Sunday, He miraculously rose from the dead. But his disciples, friends and family didn’t know the full story during the long hours that spanned from Jesus’s death until they found His tomb empty on Easter Sunday morning. And
Read more
Oh, Small Business Owner, how I feel for you. I understand the fear of knowing what tomorrow holds. Stay-at-home orders mean a lack of sales, dwindling business prospects, and evaporating savings accounts. I understand the faces that pop into your mind at night: Your employees and the faces of their children; those children who are fed each week by the income brought in by your ideas, innovation and persistence. How will those good, good people pay their bills if you lay them off? I know how you are sitting up, looking for a new market, or a new way to
Read moreI’ve been afraid to hope. I feel like my adult life has been full of so many overwhelming challenges, unexpected turns, and blows to my hopes that it has put me in a place where I am afraid to extend that fragile vine of light. It’s not that I’ve been hope-less. There is a difference between being afraid to hope and having no hope. Being hopeless looks like in-the-pit despair; feeling like there is no path forward; being at the end of yourself with no energy, gumption or will to move on. Being afraid to hope feels more like disappointment;
Read moreMost days, I feel like a work horse. My life is full of obligations that live on repeat. At home there is the never-ending cycle of laundry, cooking and cleaning, school drop-offs, shaken up with a doctors appointment every now and again. At work, it’s bookkeeping, reconciling checkbooks, onboarding and offboarding employees, and all of the details in between. Some days, it feels like I continually pour myself out, only to be left completely empty at the end of the day…and then I need to wake up and do it all again the next day. On one such day recently, I
Read more
It was my first time in the Ahwahnee bar, that cold March night in quiet Yosemite Valley. We were lucky enough to know locals on that first visit, and they wisely advised us that an inexpensive way to enjoy the historic Ahwahnee Hotel was to linger over a nice cocktail. It was warm and dark in the bar, with a motif of dark wood and what I remember to be deep red curtains lining the floor-to-ceiling windows and back wall. It had the aura of a place that had hosted many conversations; many deep thoughts; and many bodies tired from
Read moreView More