What if you fill your cup of life? Not overfill it with boring or uninspiring activities or meaningless possessions. (Do you ever fill your life with tangible stuff to drown out the lack of real stuff?) Not overload it with placeholders that scream “my cup’s full!”. But, rather, fill it to the brim with the wholeness of […]
Tag Archives: grandchildren
As I sat drinking a tea, from a cup I gave my Mom before she died, I thought about my twist on “Twas The Night Before Christmas” from a few years ago. May the end of this calendar year bring you peace, blessings and joy. Kay ‘Twas the day after Christmas and all through the place, […]
Four years ago, when our granddaughter Lauren was nine, we were driving to a soccer tournament when she asked, from the backseat, if we wanted to use her “future telling app”. Of course, we said yes. After all, who can resist a future telling app? Lauren proceeded to ask for dates in the future. We […]
One morning, I woke up long before the sun was rising. I walked into the bathroom, closed the door and flipped the light switch. Nothing happened. Then I realized there were no lights anywhere. The programmed lights outside weren’t on. The little light on the electric toothbrush wasn’t flashing. Hmmmm….no instant gratification light going on here this morning. […]
Prologue: This morning as I read more about the fellow humans who were killed in Texas on Sunday, I was—like I’m sure many of you—overcome with emotion. Their personal stories, not unlike many of ours, are simple, unpretentious and real. They leave behind earthly dreams that will be unfulfilled, and loved ones whose lives will […]
Grace One morning, without even “trying”, I found myself in a place of grace. The feeling was palpable although nothing looked different. It was experienced rather than seen. (Sometimes, we humans don’t believe something’s real unless we can see it and touch it.) At first, this incipient energy created only a subtle shift in the […]
In early 2016, I wrote a letter to my then ten-year-old granddaughter with ten specific thoughts. It was a spur-of-the-moment sharing, hand-written on simple lined “school” paper with holes in the margin, around which I drew little flowers. She asked me to hang onto it for her and I took it out, and reread it, […]
‘Twas the day after Christmas and all through the place, the din of the last day, now a quieter space. The presents are stacked, although all now unwrapped, and the family—well, they really could use a nap. The children were playing with all their new toys, while they remembered gladly the fun and the noise. We sat with […]
There are meals “big enough to feed the entire family”, books titled “Not Different Enough” and “Good Enough to Be Great”, and songs like “Can’t Get Enough” and “The World Is Not Enough”. We say things like: “I don’t have enough time.” “I’m not rich (powerful, successful, popular, important) enough.” “We didn’t do well enough.” […]
It’s 3:40 on Monday morning. The wind is howling outside and I’m sitting at my computer typing away. I tossed and turned for a while before finally deciding that I wasn’t going to quiet my brain, so I’m up. My mind is filled with so much. Today is the last day of grade school for […]
My granddaughter, Lauren, read me a story this morning, about the devastating tornado of 2011 that struck Joplin, Missouri. “The Evil Swirling Darkness” is a narrative of a family that lived through that twister. One of the three children was on the way home with his Aunt, Uncle and cousin when it hit. The truck they […]
“God, Lasagna and Peace” was originally posted in 2013. Today, with the sun shining and a special place in my heart for both of my precious grandchildren, I’d like to share this one again. From 2013: In our humanness, we often get caught up in the “things of this world.” That’s typical. (I use “typical” […]
I just finished teaching a series of home staging classes. Typically, people take this course because they’re planning to put their homes on the market to sell, and staging gives them an advantage. As always, I ask the students what they hope to get out of the classes. Usually, the answers range from “I need […]
In our humanness, we often get caught up in the “things of this world.” That’s typical. (I use “typical” instead of “normal” as much as possible because, how the heck can we dictate what “normal” is?) Many of us have so many things. We work hard to acquire these things; we treasure them; we boast […]
