2020

During the same week that I receive Angie's devotion on looking  intentionally  for God's footprints in our lives, I was reading The Hiding Place , the story of Corrie Ten Boom.  Corrie lived with her father and sister in Holland in the 1930s. She was 50-years old and working in her father's watch shop when Germany came in looking to "exterminate" anyone they deemed unworthy, from Jews to the mentally ill. Corrie became one of the queen ringleaders in the fight against the Holocaust, finding hiding places for anyone in need and taking in the "least desirable" into her own home. Eventually she was caught and sent to a concentration camp as punishment.  Corrie and her sister Betsie were in the camp together. Their parents had raised them in a Christian home, which included nightly Bible readings and belief in the power of prayer. While Corrie was like "the rest of us," not shy to hide her complaints when the smell of the latrines was ...

My sweet friend Angie in Indiana sent us an Easter card this week. (Hi Angie!) In the card she included a page that she had torn out of her daily devotional. The devotion began: "Are you living thoughtfully and intentionally --or are you living automatically?" (One of the things I love the most about picking a "word of the year" is when others get involved, sending me encouragement in the form of books and devotions, or teasingly using the word in our conversations.) The gist of the devotion was that if we are just going through the motions of life, we won't see the many ways God is at work and present in any and every situation. We have to intentionally look for God's footprints throughout the week. Shortly after reading the devotion, Randy and I went out for a drive. We hadn't even pulled out of our driveway yet when we saw this beautiful tom. We had never seen him before! And as we stopped to take his picture, I called out to him in my bes...

I just finished reading " Big Magic ," by Elizabeth Gilbert. (You might recognize her as the author of " Eat, Pray, Love .") The subtitle of Gilbert's book is "Creative Living Beyond Fear." And the timing of it, reading this during a time when I've so recently " failed " at being intentional , is all too perfect. Because one of the reasons I struggle with moving beyond "good intentions ," to actually getting things done, is fear. Fear of failure. Fear of imperfection. Fear of rejection. Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO - it's a thing!) on "this" because I'm doing "that." Fear can immobilize you, keeping you stuck in those "good intentions ." But Gilbert points out that creativity doesn't strike while you're doing nothing. Great ideas, if you're ever so lucky to have one, happen when you're busy living, doing, creating. It reminds me of the Parable of the Talents, found in M...

Being intentional is awesome. Fun. Exciting. Adventurous. And makes you want to continue being more and more intentional every day. Until you fall off the wagon. You go on vacation. Or get sick. A holiday comes up that's whole purpose seems to be eating Cadbury eggs and pancakes and all things you have "given up". You are faced with something that looks "more exciting" than the thing you are being intentional about. We've all been there. You run outside for 5 straight days and then it rains or snows and your "I'll run again when it isn't muddy" ends up lasting 3 weeks, then 3 months, and you wonder where the time has gone. You decide to start eating healthy and you do well for 2 days then suddenly you are all out of willpower. And after that pizza and ice cream binge you tell yourself it's all over. I will never be a healthy eater. Ever. I might as well just eat whatever I want. Or you say you'll clean house after ...

Today is my dad's birthday. This picture is of us two years ago at the Columbus airport. We celebrated his birthday with lunch at the Max & Erma's there outside the terminals. He was coming home from Corpus Christi and I was on my way to Madrid. This year for his birthday he sent me a book. That's right: it's his birthday and I got a present! The book he sent was " Above the Line ," by Urban Meyer, head coach of the Ohio State University football team. My dad graduated from Ohio State so I grew up as a fan. And my mom new Meyer's wife Shelley when Shelley was just a kid, so that adds a little something extra to our support of the current team. In the note my dad sent along with the book he wrote: "It has your word in it." I thought it was awesome that my dad would hone in on the word " intentional " in this 250 page book. But once I started reading I realized there was no way he could miss it. The word is everywhere! I...

A long standing joke between my mother and me stems from a time when I was little and our whole family was sick. It was the middle of the night and I was crying because I had just gotten sick in my bed. My mom heard me crying and got up, but she too was sick and tired, and sick and tired of me being sick and tired. So she went to the bathroom, wet a washcloth, and, standing in my doorway, threw the washcloth in the direction of my bed. Then she went back to her room to sleep. We laugh because it was so uncharacteristic of her. But it just proves how much stress it can put on a person when you are sick and caring for others who are sick. This story comes to mind because Rand and I have the flu. And have had the flu for the past week. And instead of getting better it just seems to be moving to different parts of our bodies. One of the major challenges to being sick as an adult is that life must go on. Work still has to be completed, laundry still has to be washed. The dogs (or kids...