How do you measure your personal success? Perhaps you are only happy with yourself, if you meet the days quota at work. Success to you might mean making the most money possible in one day. For some occupations, success means arriving back home alive. Students would call an A+ on a test a success. How we measure our own success could potentially be causing us unnecessary daily stress and feelings of failure …even hopelessness. Yet, where does it all start? Each evening we go to bed with a mental checklist of things that we think we NEED to accomplish throughout the next day. Let’s imagine yours looks something like this:…
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Are You In Survival Mode?
Chances are, we work for the most part of our days. Let me repeat, WE SPEND MOST OF OUR DAY WORKING. For those of us that work outside the home, we usually give our most energetic and productive time to our job. This means that our co-workers and supervisors become our extended family. The work that we do becomes the activity we constantly engage in day after day. Therefore, if we work in an environment of negative, ungodly, bossy, and self-righteous people doing something that gives us no personal satisfaction or worth, we are essentially wasting our lives! Unfortunately, we aren’t helping ourselves or anyone else. That’s not really a…
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Relentless Faith
Many children today have been lied to so often that they have determined adults can’t be trusted. Momma promised to be home by dark, but she wasn’t. So, the young girl was left home alone, in the dark, scared, and crying. Daddy promised to come to the young boy’s school play, but he had an excuse as to why he never showed. Mommy promised she wouldn’t pawn this year’s Christmas presents from the school, but she did. Daddy promised not to get angry and beat the family anymore, but they still get bruises… often. Adults in today’s world read and hear untruths almost hourly. There is back-biting and drama in…
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From The Cradle To The Cross
How prepared is your child for what lies ahead? How well have you trained them for the storms that are sure to come? Recently, I asked kids of varying ages if they could tell me something that their parents had taught them about life. I received the following answers: Be nice, Stay out of trouble, Take up for myself, Don’t do drama, Live life to the fullest because it’s short, Don’t steal, and I really don’t remember. Although the above responses are good ones… except the, “I don’t remember one,” they do very little to give children the survival skills they need to be happy, productive, and successful in life.…
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The Apple of His Eye
I’ll never forget one specific day when I took my sixteen month old daughter to church. I was so proud of her. She was dressed in a frilly, pink eyelet dress that was accompanied by a soft white sweater. She had the biggest shiny brown eyes. Tiny auburn ringlets bounced all around her little head. She had chubby cheeks and a smile that would melt hearts. I just knew everyone wished they had a daughter as beautiful as mine! I, myself, had dreamed of a daughter like her for as long as I could remember. One of my former classmates visited church that day and brought her little girl that…
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Time Travel
You’ve heard of Christmas in July. Ah…but have you heard of Thanksgiving in January? Now that you’ve gotten past the setting or not setting of your New Year’s Resolutions, it’s time for you to rest and reflect upon just how far you’ve come in life. What are you truly thankful for and how can that propel you into your future full of internal happiness? If you try to do that based on a day, a week, or even a year, you will end up saying, “Oh, I’m thankful for my family, my house, my vehicle, my job,” but that’s not the half of it! Beware, this is the time where…
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God’s Personal Love Song
Everyone loves a heart-felt love song…right? Parents are aware that even tiny babies need love songs. I recall singing, “You are my sunshine to my firstborn,” “You are my moonshine,” to my second born (he was mesmerized by the moon,) “You are my starshine,” to the third born, and “You are my rainbow shine,” to my final child. (Her hair turned a different color several times a day! All men know how to make a ladies heart skip a beat, like Alfalfa did for Carla, in The Little Rascals when he sang, “You are so beautiful to me! You’re everything I hoped for, you’re everything I need…” Men, though they…
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What’s Your Battle Cry?
May I politely ask, what is your battle cry? What do you shout when you are in trouble? Okay, maybe you don’t shout literally, but who do you call upon in your time of need? Who do you cry out to help you in sickness or loneliness? Who do you call upon when you have problems with your children? Who do you call upon when your husband has decided he doesn’t want to be married to you anymore? Who do you call upon when you don’t have money for the pile of bills on the table? A battle cry is known to be used to rally a group of soldiers…
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Life on a Mission
I’m such a procrastinator! How about you? If you’re like me, in order to get something done, it takes an ACT OF CONGRESS! Ummm, my congress hasn’t been working too well lately either. So, I decided that I wanted to be more productive/effective this year. Yes, that is my main goal! I realized that if I wanted to get more things accomplished on a daily basis, I was gonna have to pull out the ol’ teacher grade book. (You’d think I would have thought of this idea a little sooner, since I’m near retirement!) Anyways, I decided to create my own personal gradebook page. On the left are the things…
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Attitude Matters!
I want to remind you that the information in my blogs is always from the heart and true. Today, I recalled a series of events that happened to me right before Christmas this past year. Let me rewind a bit first. My children are ages 16, 18, 24, and 27. After years of filling Christmas stockings for the whole family with comical things for laughs, I decided that I would just start filling my two-year-old’s stocking with the good stuff. I honestly thought everyone was tired of the silliness anyway! When I told my twenty-four year-old son, he complained, “Awe, don’t stop, that was always the most fun part of…
