How do you manage stress? Picture these modern stress management scenarios. A young woman rushes into Starbucks, brows knitted, fists clenched tight and orders a Venti Mocha Latte, “Double espresso please.” A child chews on the eraser end of her pencil as she bends over…
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The One Key to a Successful Day
How do you define a successful day? By how much you get done? This is my to-do list for today: Clean bathrooms Dust furniture Do grocery shopping Finish this blog post Some days my to-do list is longer. Some days it is shorter. But on…
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Why We Need to Make an Effort to Rest.
This week I’ve needed to make an effort to rest. Somehow my husband came down with a summer cold and though I really tried to avoid getting it, I was unsuccessful. All week long I’ve been dragging around the house, sneezing and sniffling. My body…
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Three Simple Things to Help You Find Joy in God’s Presence
The only reliable source of joy is in God’s presence. But how can we find that? A little experiment with three common objects helped me focus on God’s presence and find more joy. Lighted candle. Silver cross. Smartphone. What do these three items have in…
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Do You Want to Be Alone? Using Silence to Hear God’s Voice
Solitude and silence are elusive commodities. But sometimes we need silence to hear God’s voice. When I was a young mom, the thing I craved more than anything was to be alone. An introvert at heart, I draw energy from time by myself with a…
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How to Run When You Can Barely Walk
Don’t you love watching little kids run? I mean they don’t run because they really need to up their fitness program. They don’t run because they are trying to get their 10,000 steps a day in a shorter span of time. They don’t run because…
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When You Struggle to Rejoice
Do you struggle to rejoice? Does the command in Philippians 4:4 make you wince? Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again—rejoice! I certainly have days when it’s hard to be full of joy. Hard to rejoice in anything. And what…
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When You Struggle to Say Yes to God’s Plan
Sometimes I have a hard time accepting God’s plan for my life. You too? I remember a conversation I had with my daughter as I was tucking her into bed when she was about four. I said something like, “Anna, you are getting so big!…
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The One Mirror Where You Will Always Look Beautiful
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?” Do you remember those words spoken by the evil queen in the Snow White fairy tale? Every time the queen approached the mirror, she fully expected the mirror to reply, “You, O queen, are…