Part One of the New Year Stress Knock-Out Series You know those annoying commercials for an instant solution – they keep you company on TV late at night when sleep has whisked away and you’re trying to settle. I was thinking, what if there was a $39.99 solution to personal stress? Wouldn’t you send in two easy payments and get the widget for sale? I would! Here are three strategies to make yourself stronger and really work like a magic potion to soothe your stresses. Each comes with a risk and reward. Don’t neglect them without counting the cost. Find…
10 Stress Knock-outs For The New Year
This week, while sitting in the tire store for my car, I felt the stress mounting. Sick friends in need, many commitments to juggle, my back speaking a bad note, so many things needing attention all at once. I realized I couldn’t help anyone else until I created a game-plan to handle it better myself. There may be a few surprises here that could help you, too. We’re going to take four weeks to put them into play, but here’s the highlights, with sections for yourself, for others, for fun, and for perspective. For you: 1.Find a corner of light…
Stolen Candy, Second Chances
Thoughts for today’s teens, and anyone needing fresh perspective. The first day of acrylic painting instructions in high school, someone ate my main project. No joking. We showed up with large canvasses, wide as I could stretch my arms. A 3×5 index card. And piles of very colorful salt-water taffy in wax-paper wrappers. Then the assignment: don’t eat the sweets, blow them up huge on the canvass! First, we glued them to the cards and made notes of the lighting so we could work on it for a few weeks. Then we carefully watched proportion and sketched the lines, shadows,…
Captivating Resilience
Part Five of the Lockout Series Moving into Freedom’s Fullness Every morning, a sweet hummingbird greets the day from the branches of our backyard plum tree. He is faithful to protect his territory. He is elegant in his stance, high above his grounds. He never leaves his watchfulness to others. He protects his domain from predators and keeps his mate in safety. He enjoys sweet delights and plays well. He is beautiful to watch, with his bright red throat and sweeping gestures. To me, he is resilient. It is both deeply centering and challenging to watch his dance in and…
Escape the Quicksand of Heartache
What is heartache? I’d define it as that sinking feeling when a difficult topic arises with a friend. It can be connected to relationships or experiences, but it’s that quicksand of loss and hurt that surrounds you when the topic or person comes up. So how do you transform your emotions after a season of loss? Let’s review the first three steps of this Lockout Series. First, look in your lockout, or virtual emotional storage unit, and see if there’s anything lurking in corners that needs to be dealt with. Discover your areas that need focus and attention. Second, discern…
Resilience Or Lockout?
How do you reinvent your trials by fire? I’ve been polishing my proposal for the manuscript now that the novel is complete and needed something to keep the super book I’m reading open. I reached in the desk drawer and saw this heavy lock. I laid it down with a loud, THUNK! Without realizing it, I’d put possibly the hardest iconic item right on my future dreams—the lock from our storage unit after the fires. EEK! What a word picture. This one object protected the photos and items the fire fighters grabbed as our home was in flames. We were…
Under The Waterfall
To escape the hectic pattern of life, where is your favorite place to uncover beauty that feeds your desire for meaning in life? If you can’t answer this question, or can’t remember the last time you tried, read on. For Valentine’s Day, my husband and children and I all visited a favorite place with gorgeous gardens, interesting libraries and science exhibits, and pretty weather. As we walked around, the serenity of the place and beautiful scents from flowers made me smile. Watching my boys chase fish in the coy pond helped me find my girlish giggle once more. After a…
The Green Song
Finding green lights for your dreams. Part of the Hawaiian Insights series. “Mom, sing the green song.” My young son would get us all to sing in the car when we were stuck at a long red light. It seemed to work, lessening the time stopped in traffic or at least getting us to laugh and giggle while we waited. As my sons have grown, now I ask them to sing the “green” song if we’re in a hurry. It’s made me more sensitive to the color green, especially since we live in a semi-arid climate without much of a…
Anne’s Green Gable Hope
“When I left Queen’s my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don’t know what lies around the bend, but I’m going to believe that the best does.” – L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables Maybe it’s my Scottish and English heritage that stressed keeping emotions buckled in, but it really has taken some soul searching to find the right balance of understanding others and listening to God’s still, quiet voice in my life. Often it could…
Life-giving Hugs
Recently Bethany Hamilton, of Soul Surfer movie fame, shark attack survivor, and world-class among women surfers, visited Southern California. One of Bethany’s great sayings is, “I can hug more people with one arm, than I ever could with two.” There were many impressive speakers before she came on, but when hundreds of tween and teen girls surrounded the stage to sit at her feet, my insides just melted. What a humbling, huge embrace! “We are all beautifully flawed in God’s eyes; He can use our flaws,” she shared. Seeing all these beautiful girls, and some amputees that are part of…
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