Once upon a time, the happy mother of three active, young boys planned out her personal dream. I’ll send them off to school and write best-selling books while they're out of my hair, she thought. Then when they come home, I’ll serve them milk and cookies and ask how their day went. I’ll be their hero, plus I’ll accomplish my goals! The young mom’s lovely notion turned out to be a fantasy. What really happened was fourteen years of home schooling. Fourteen years of studying curriculum instead of attending writers’ conferences. Fourteen years of teaching and grading and Continue Reading
One counter-intuitive but effective way to overcome anxiety
What’s the first thing that pops into your mind when someone tells you, “Don’t think about pink elephants!” Right...pink elephants. That’s why, when you try hard to not feel anxious, you enter a vicious cycle. Dealing with anxiety is like dealing with insomnia. You can’t try your way into a good night of sleep—and you can’t try your way out of worry. What you need is a change of focus. According to Dr. Earl Henslin in This is Your Brain on Joy, your brain contains one neural pathway on which the emotions of either joy or anxiety can travel. There’s literally not room enough for Continue Reading
How to give advice to your adult children
Grandma was on babysitting duty. She noticed that her grandson dawdled and played with the meal she'd fixed him, so she reached over and began to spoon-feed him. That might have been okay—except that he was five years old and perfectly capable of feeding himself. When our kids grow to adulthood, it can be hard for us to let them make their own decisions. After all, we’ve spent a couple of decades training them. We have more life experience. We would love for them to learn from our mistakes. As a result, we can be tempted to spoon-feed our adult children—not with veggies, but Continue Reading
Why a seemingly negative word might be just what God wants you to hear right now
Watching her husband’s pickup head down the road toward the construction site where he was working, “Mona” had a feeling something bad was going to happen to him that day. However, Mona had been trained in the art of positive confession, so she brushed the thought from her mind. It’s just the enemy trying to get me to be fearful and negative. The feeling came again, stronger this time. Mona got more aggressive and rebuked the negative thought. Later that day, Mona’s husband was injured when he fell from a roof. She realized then that God had been warning her so she could pray Continue Reading