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The Funny Thing About Thanksgiving
I remember a few years back Oprah used to encourage followers to list things they were grateful for on a daily basis, like keeping a journal of gratitude. Obviously this is not a bad thing, but I just wonder if this is really effective. Is our idea of living in gratitude simply about stating the things we appreciate on a daily basis, or keeping these little blessings in a book? And what ends up on the list…is it only the Facebook worthy happenings, the best that we want everyone to see, maybe that great Black Friday find, or is it something deeper like that quiet stillness we might treasure before…
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Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness
I may have been MIA for the past two months, but my brain has been anything but silent. With my daughter graduating high school, the bustle of the end of the school year activities for the younger peeps, a fourth birthday for my little man, appointments, daily chores, grad party prep, life, work, summer…I’m exhausted just typing it, yet by the grace and provision of God, I am surviving and have done a lot of contemplating in the process. For my graduating daughter, this has been a time of great excitement, a milestone anticipated for years, and culminating in a daunting schedule of senior events and parties. It’s a season…
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Feasting & Fasting Part 3: Preparation for the Feast
We’ve finally made it to the main course and are ready to talk feasting. So at this point you’re probably hungry and wondering what there is to talk about. We all know “feasting” and need no instruction on the subject, right? Yet in our culture, where food is so much more than sustenance, I wonder do we really know feasting or is it just another day of eating? If we look to the Bible, feasting is always associated with a celebration or a holy day. It’s important to understand that although a celebration may include feasting, the feast isn’t usually the focus of the celebration. Some may come to a…
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Feasting & Fasting Part 1: The Introduction
Long before I took my first college course or got my first job, I was a dietitian. I have always loved food and started cooking and baking when I was just a kid. My grandfather also taught me about gardening, how to clean fish and allowed me to help as he milked cows and cared for the other farm animals. From a young age, I learned where food came from, how it was processed and how to make it pleasing to the palate. Becoming a dietitian deepened my understanding of the nutritional aspect of food, and later discovering my own food intolerance and allergy further broadened my education and gave…
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The Value of Gratitude
For me, Thanksgiving has always announced the arrival of the Christmas Season. It’s like crossing a bridge from autumn into Christmas, and Thanksgiving is the grateful troll that guards the passage. On one side of the bridge everything is in a state of fading shades of orange and brown, but on the other side the world sparkles and glows with a little more glitz every year. Of course not everyone lives by my holiday timeline, so many have already had their trees up long enough for the ornaments to need dusting. Though even for those decorating well before my personal kick-off, Thanksgiving begins the anticipatory, month long celebration of the…
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Are you Living Like You’re in the Army?
There used to be an ad for the Army that suggested enlisted individuals do more before nine a.m. than most people do all day, with the tagline “Be all that you can be”. I suppose the ad was intended to inspire, but it just made me feel guilty, like I really needed to step up my game if I didn’t want to be like all those other slovenly Americans. It probably sounds a bit ridiculous, but the truth is I’ve always carried this oppressive feeling I had to prove myself, driving me to become this perfectionistic, over-achiever that rarely rested. In my mind, I was singing Ethel Mermen, “Anything you…
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Three Reasons Many Christians Don’t Know Their Calling
Unlike most Christians I know, my faith walk has been sort of a DIY project. Of course I’m being a bit silly, but for a girl who met Jesus alone in her room one very dark night, there was just no possibility of it coming together with any more finesse than I could muster in my own ignorance. I was sixteen, had trust issues and didn’t talk to anyone about the inner turmoil I was battling, and I certainly didn’t discuss my supernatural experience with God that changed the entire trajectory of my life. It was years before I walked through the doors of that small Baptist church in Phenix…
