The Blog
of grace & gumption
My oldest son, Gideon, is seven and in the first grade. For the first time ever, neighborhood boys have started knocking on our front door asking if Gideon could come out and play. Because I have been praying for years that Gideon (who is naturally introverted) would...
With four kids, I rarely get to spend time with just one child at a time, and now that my oldest, Gideon, is in first grade, those times are even more rare. So when his school asked for chaperones for their field trip to the zoo a few weeks ago, I was thrilled to be...
Every now and then, I hear about something so fun and cool that I just can't keep it to myself. This is one of those times! A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of interviewing a friend of mine, independent film writer/director Sean Morgan, about his upcoming movie,...
One winter day when I was about nine years old, I spent the morning reading in my bedroom while my brother, who was about four years old at the time, and our cousins played with their toys in the living room. I was just getting to the climax of my book when something...
I’ll admit, I don’t “get” football. Oh, I understand the game well enough. Two teams of very large and very fast men shroud themselves in padded clothing, slap each other on the backside, then set out to be the best at getting an oblong ball from one end of a field to...
It was almost midnight on a Friday night several years ago, and I was returning home from a church social with a friend. We were stopped at a stoplight just a block away from home and didn’t even notice the black BMW in front of us. That is, we didn’t notice it until...
Before I wrote my book, Guilt-Free Quiet Times, I conducted an anonymous, online survey. You can find a summary of the survey at the end of the book, but there's more to the survey that you won't find... until now: The comments. I asked two open-ended questions and...
Excuse me for a moment while I write about social things instead of spiritual things. In particular, let's talk about Facebook. In December, Facebook made a really big change that you may not have noticed. If you're on Facebook, you probably have a run-of-the-mill...
I remember feeling like a fog swept into my brain sometime around November 1st and only began to dissipate in January. It was the year that the Christmas season officially did me in. Yes, I managed to have moments of clarity every now and then, but for the most part,...
Other than eating, you spent a lot of time last week feeling thankful, didn’t you? You thanked God for your cozy home, your hard-working husband, your secure job, your health, and all those other blessings that God has provided for you. Well, Thanksgiving is over now,...
even years ago, my husband gave me a 90-day devotional by Beth Moore. Today, this is what I read: Now, just so you don’t accidentally get the wrong idea, this is not my 28th time to read Day 67. If I had been holier or more diligent or perhaps a...
As a recovering judgmental snob, I've had a lot of experience with guilt. I've logged more frequent flyer miles with guilt trips than I care to admit. But what God's taught me, over and over again, is that guilt doesn't work. Here are four reasons why. 1. It’s...