When Wounds Are Buried Deep
I’m not what most would call adventurous. I’m a homebody. I like to play it safe, appreciate routine, cleanliness, and order. Recently, however, I stepped out of my comfort zone. My husband and I were invited on an excursion to Brimstone—an ATV recreation park in…
The Art of Invitation
It’s an art. Yet, in our busy lives, we miss it, or perhaps we purposefully choose to ignore it. God demonstrated it in his desire to be in relationship with us–calling out “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9) to Adam and Eve that they might walk…
T.I.M.E.–Take It / Make Eternal
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven … [God] has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of [humans] … (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 11–NIV). Time. Is it just me, or does time…
If You Give God’s Girl a Bible
For an opportunity to win a prize (Not a cookie!), please follow the crumbs to the end. ********** There’s a sweet children’s book our littles loved called If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. This story by Laura J. Numeroff tells of a mouse who simply…
Lessons Learned from Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma
I am both proud and humbled to introduce my guest for this week’s Penning Pansies. Carol is my cousin, but usually we call each other “God sisters.” Her mom was my Grandma Helga’s sister. We share a Finnish heritage, a love for words, and, mostly,…
The Night Before Christmas–Part 2
“To share a table with someone is to share everything” (Paul Krueger, Steel Crow Saga). The menu was determined. The food purchased, then prepared. What was unplanned, unexpected, were the added guests. They came, shaken and weary, to our back door on Christmas Eve. But like…
The Night Before Christmas–Part I
The longer I live, the smaller this world seems. This world into which a Baby was born–where He grew to be a Man, was condemned and killed before coming back alive to again breathe life into the dark, sin-stained void. The same formless void into…
Let’s Ask–M.A.S.K.?
“For you were called to freedom, brothers [and sisters]. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another” (Galatians 5:3). For Christmas, we bought each of our children and their significant others masks we thought fit…
2020-Hindsight for Hope in the New Year
Twenty-twenty Hindsight–(n.) seeing clearly, with full understanding, a situation or event only after it has happened. 2020–a really, really hard year; a thing of the past. One can only have twenty-twenty hindsight once he or she has stepped into a new situation. Like stepping over the…
A Christmas Love Letter to Devon Mara-Leigh
On this final week of Advent, I’m sharing from the depths of a mother’s LOVE–which remains, even all these years later, a mystery to me. One of my life’s greatest teachers was a baby who I held only hours, who lived only weeks. Still, her…