Value Add

Failure.  So it’s been basically two weeks since I wrote my last blog post. I’ve actually written about failure before. I set out to write a blog post every day in November. Then it became obvious that wasn’t going to be sustainable so I was going to do every week day, but then I missed […]

This morning during my morning prayers I sat where I normally do looking out the window at our tree and across at my neighbors trees. The leaves are turning from green to yellow and orange before turning bright red and then falling to the ground. Yesterday I spent the middle of the day raking leaves […]

When I read my own writing most often the first draft is pretty awful. Doing blog posts I try to be a bit more lenient on myself but sermons I’ve written or the early drafts of my book I wrote — well those I often cringe at when reading over again. Yesterday I shared with […]

I didn’t get to sleep very early last night. And while my escape led to a “tv” hangover of sorts, the grey cloudy morning did not help my melancholy as I stumbled through my morning prayers. I’m reading a book this month by AJ Swoboda called “A Glorious Dark” which is actually about passion week […]

Cycles. There are a lot of cycles in life. Being married I’ve come to appreciate just how significant period cycles are for women. Janel has written about our fertility journey several times to raise awareness to the reality many couples and women face in difficulty doing what some assume to be “easy”. During infertility treatments […]

“Kiss the blue passport” we used to jokingly say while living in Southeast Asia. The reality was going through immigration was a tedious process in Vietnam and other countries when I first moved there in 2003 (my dad’s job at Nike took us overseas for almost five years in Ho Chi Minh City). My parents […]

Refuge. There are a lot of words I find only come into regular use when singing church songs or reading the Bible or hearing a sermon. But today as it’s close to freezing when I let the dogs out to pee, I was definitely excited to take refuge beside the gas stove in my house. […]

Fall. Today marks the “fall back” or end of Daylight Savings, we get an extra hour of sleep unless you live in Arizona. This year Fall has been more significant for me. Perhaps it’s because I’ve watched the season change through the bay window I sit in front of every morning as I do my […]

Emotions are just part of life. In fact, the ups and downs we experience and the polarity of joy and sadness are what cue us that we are truly human beings. I struggle not to view myself as a “human doing” – defining myself by the task in front of me or the success in […]

A principal I have found incredibly essential in cultivating an intimate relationship with God is solitude. Jesus practices this over and over. There are different ways to practice solitude. “The purpose of the Spiritual Disciplines,” Richard Foster says,  “is the total transformation of the person…” by “…replacing old destructive habits of thought with new life-giving […]