The Arkansas State Police is a happening place to be, especially in the motor vehicle office and even more so from one to four when they are administering driving tests. I recently took a family member to fill out some paperwork, which provided me plenty of time to sit in the waiting room and watch people coming and going. Anxious teens milled around, some of whom were too cool to show their jitters. Nervous mothers smacking gum contrasted against parents who rolled their eyes, muttering Read More
Blog
When We Fall for the Lie “Approval Equals Love”
I desperately want people to like me. There. I said it. The thought of someone being displeased with me in any way drops a sick feeling in my gut. What’s one way to shake that cold feeling of dread? Work harder. Be more agreeable, more likable. Fit in. Be accepted and never, ever let them see the real you. After all, if they know what you’re really like, the acceptance will disappear. Right? That’s what I told myself, anyways. I’ve battled people pleasing all my Read More
When Fear Was Shattered
What strange times we’re muddling through. Covid-19 has left us all reeling, searching for answers. For normalcy. For an end to the chaos. For hope. I pondered what I should share with you this month. I wondered if you wanted to know how my speaking schedule has come to a grinding halt. (Whose hasn’t?) I could tell you about living out of boxes while in the middle of a move during a global epidemic, or how being a homeschooling mama has saved my sanity during Read More
Wants and Needs: Which One is Netflix?
Country living is the best. Well, it was awesome to me, anyways. For a time in my childhood, my Dad pastored a small church in a tiny Arkansas town, population 630. It wasn’t exactly a metropolis. We had one bank, one gas station, one small grocery store and one restaurant where you could buy anything deep fried. That’s it. Everything else consisted of houses, churches, dirt roads and cows. Lots of cows. Everywhere. Oh, I forgot to mention chicken houses. Growing up in a small, Read More
Cracked Pots
A fable A water bearer in India had two large pots, one hung on each end of a pole which he carried across his neck. One of the pots had a crack in it, while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full potion of water at the end of the long walk from the stream to the master’s house. The cracked pot arrived only half full. For a full two years this went on daily, with the bearer delivering only one and Read More
Homeschooling Mishaps in History
Homeschooling is an adventure. It’s a study of exploring your children’s learning style, combined with discovering the number of emotions that can be expressed in one day, all while acquiring knowledge of how long a mom can lock herself in a bathroom with chocolate before her family calls 911. I’m baffled how quickly I can teach my kiddos something and have it drain from their spongy brains like sweet tea in a mason jar at a church potluck. This was never more apparent when teaching Read More
Breaking Free Part Two
In part one, we looked at the very real possibility that many of us, although we accepted the freedom Jesus bought for us, continue to have our minds and emotions stuck in the ‘slavery mindset’. It conditions a person to accept harmful circumstances to themselves as the natural order of things. They view their own worth through their master’s eyes. They believe about themselves what they have been told to believe, whether it’s true or not. The dichotomy between our freedom and the slavery mindset Read More
How to Break Free from the Chains
“I freed a thousand slaves. I would’ve freed a thousand more, if they only knew they were slaves.” ~Harriet Tubman If they only knew they were slaves… In writing and researching the Civil War, I learned Confederate plantation owners often made it their goal to break the will of their enslaved. They would make it their goal to have the slave accept their “station” as a mindset. After all, ‘normal’ is whatever you grow up with. ‘Normal’ is what you’ve always known. Frederick Douglass put Read More
What I Learned in the Darkness
I’ll never forget the night I told God, “I want out.” I was Miss Christian. I did it all. Taught the classes. Organized VBS. Took the teens to church camp. Always smiling. Always ready to lend a hand. And I was miserable inside. Depression is a silent cry. Likewise, anxiety is a storm of crippling intensity inside the mind, but can appear like a tranquil lake on the outside. Depression is not always the dark-clad figure hiding in the back of the room. It’s the Read More
Shattering the Fairytale Part 2: Rewriting the Story
In part one, I told you all about how those pesky Disney princess messed me up, as well as diving into how perfectly unhappy I became trying to be, well, perfect. Am I the only recovering perfectionist out there? I left you dangling with this question: now that we recognize the problem, and see what causes it, what will we do about it? 1. First of all, remind yourself that God loves you no matter how well, or how poorly, you perform. “In all these Read More