• Aging - Motherhood - mothering from the sidelines - my story - Womanhood

    Keeping Up

    I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately… you know, keeping up.  Not the Keeping up with the Joneses sort of keeping up, but the staying strong and keeping up with the times sort of keeping up.  It’s been going on for awhile, but I hadn’t noticed it so much in the last few years as much as I have recently. On a recent trip down to SeaTac airport, there was some questioning who’d drive and who’d stay home.  I volunteered to drive and as I was driving and the miles were passing… maybe it was mile-marker 14 or so,…

  • Family - marriage

    memories…

    A few months ago, our son married his sweetheart and it seemed that those days brought about as many tears as they did smiles as we remembered — over and over again — days gone by.  I’ve been thinking about that recently as I’ve been daily thinking of things for which to be thankful over the last thirty-five years.  I’ve been overwhelmed with thankfulness to the Lord for my husband and for the blessings — the heaps of blessings thirty-five years have brought us.  It’s amazing how many memories have come to mind — and possibly more amazing is that…

  • Home Sweet Home - Homemaking - Motherhood - Slices of Life

    Love what you do.

    You’ve likely heard the phrase: “Do what you love, love what you do.”  Well… I got to thinking about that phrase sometime back and thought: one can’t always do that.  And then I thought, maybe I feel like I can’t always do what I love [to do], but I can learn to love what I do (and change my whole outlook in the process).   And so there was a turning point in my journey.  One of many turning points. :o) Lemme give you an example.  Just this morning, I came into the kitchen planning to unload/reload my dishwasher (and to…

  • Devotionals - Slices of Life

    Wherever you are: begin (again) there.

    Now, this seems like such simplistic advice — it’s so obvious that it’s almost laughable.  But when you stop and think about it, it’s true for lots of us that we cannot start fresh when we’re in the middle of something — or that because we’ve already messed up the beginning or have failed to accomplish the previous task, we’re sort of stuck into thinking we cannot just pick up and move on. At the thrift store (or in my cabinet) I occasionally see notebooks or  undated planners that have writing or notes in the first few pages.  You know,…

  • Devotionals - Music

    Living Sacrifice

    As I’ve been mulling over my previous post, it dawned on me that sometimes language is confining and that what we think is commonly understood is not necessarily easily conveyed or understood/accepted by others.  I think we sometimes put people off by the very things we say, think or do.  As if, our goals or what we do or say is the “end all – be all” and that’s not what was intended at all.  So, that said, here’s the song that was playing in the theater of my mind as I read and considered all the different aspects or…

  • Devotionals - Potpourri - Womanhood

    2013… Endeavors

    It’s a new year, a clean, fresh start… be done with lesser things, be a woman who seeks joy, peace and love — start today doing foundational things… and what are these, where can they be found, Who is the Source?  The source is Jesus… Faith in the Living Lord Jesus and being found in Him… daily looking to Him; daily abiding in Him; daily watching at His gates and following in His Steps.  All of these “Endeavor-To-Be’s” are nothing if not founded upon the Faith of Jesus and His Life in and through us — know this “in my…

  • Family - Homemaking - Homeschooling - Motherhood - Potpourri

    Empty Spaces

    I don’t know what it is about “empty spaces” and my (and maybe your) insatiable need to fill them, but both are there: the empty spaces and the insatiable need to fill them.  I guess I attempt to fill full spaces, too… but that’s another story for another day. I was tempted to take the beautiful new calendar my daughter bought for me and insert it into the oak calendar frame and rehang it clean and fresh — empty — for awhile.  But before I knew it, I was filling in birthdays — deciding to limit the notations to ‘family’…