I’ve joined a lot of groups in my lifetime. You probably have, too. It seems to be encouraged and expected. When you’re young, you join groups like Pioneer Girls, or Scouts, or Awana—maybe it’s mostly because your mom signs you up, but maybe also because you have an interest. In high school, you have sports…
I get together with a group of women every other Friday. There are nine of us, most a year or two on either side of our fiftieth birthdays. Our kids are all teens or twenty-somethings, and we have all been married for approximately forever. Along with the usual talk about our families and jobs, we…
“Preach the gospel always, if necessary use words.” ~St. Francis of Assisi I’m a therapist at a hospital. Recently, we had an irritable, uncooperative patient who was putting everyone on her floor on edge. She yelled at every staff member who came into her room. She not-so-politely asked me to leave and not return. At…
My husband and I were married August 5, 2000. Since then, we have moved eleven times. We have had many neighbors. Our first neighbors may have influenced our initial bad attitude toward loving the people who live around us. We lived in a questionable neighborhood at the time, in a townhouse with a shared wall. Our neighbor was,…
I’ve always been a fan of the little things. Small, subtle acts of romance or friendship have always been what’s most important to me. There’s beauty in quiet, purposeful love. But I noticed something the other day that took me by surprise: [Tweet “The love we share by accident might be just as important as the…
Have you ever noticed that little kids tend to communicate to others the same things that have been communicated to them? One time while I was in college, I was at a picnic hosted by one of the families on staff with our campus ministry. During the course of the event, I found myself sitting…