All my life I’ve had an internal drive to be the best and do it all in order to be considered valuable. This drive has often manifested as perfectionism. In school I strove to receive the top grades and most accolades, earning the title of valedictorian in both high school and college. I participated in…
The Lord detests lying lips, but he delights in people who are trustworthy. (Proverbs 12:22 NIV) My family and I recently went on a road trip that took us into Canada. When we were planning our trip from Michigan to Boston and noticed the most direct route sent us not only through Canada but directly through Niagara…
No one wants to label themselves a failure, but we all fail. The Bible spells it out clearly for us: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23 NIV). Knowing we will fail and probably fail often, however, shouldn’t leave us feeling discouraged. We were never meant to do any…
We all get discouraged. Yesterday I got discouraged at least three times before three o’clock. I didn’t know I was feeling low until a friend called and asked, “How are you?” “Discouraged,” I said, without skipping a beat. Some friends can take an honest answer. A true friend always can. (Thanks, Andree.) I felt better…
God Values Words; We Should Too As I write this, a Twitter-verse war has erupted about the media using the word lie in relation to our current president. This comes at the same time the Southern Baptist Convention, to put it mildly, is wrestling with careless words spoken by their leader that have negatively affected women…
Once, in a blaze of book love, I sent a copy of Anne of Green Gables to an eleven-year-old girl I had never met. This happened because of a conversation I had when I was twenty-three, sitting knee-to-knee with an extroverted flight attendant on a plane so small it was termed a “puddle jumper.” The…