I was afraid of the dark when I was a child. Truth is, I was afraid of the dark when I was a 21-year-old newlywed. That was a bit of surprise to my husband. I had both real and imaginary reasons to be afraid of the dark. Make believe monsters are scary enough. The real-life ones? Those are harder to …
@bethvogt My goal was simple: Sort through a stack of papers that needed to be filed. I never expected to return to the beginnings of a dream. A white restaurant napkin scribbled on both sides with words written in black ink and protected by a plastic page protector was slipped among the workshop notes and conference brochures and book contracts …
@bethvogt “Another fall, another turned page…” by Wallace Stegner (1909-1993), novelist Are you enjoying the arrival of autumn and all various social media posts and quotes celebrating the seasons? Ones like: “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” L. M. Montgomery (1874-1942), novelist “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” …
@bethvogt People are talking about both of the who’s and all of the what ifs of the upcoming presidential election. I’m not going to be one of those people. Not here on this blog. Not on any social media platform. And very rarely with family and friends. There’s the oft-repeated saying, “Never talk about politics or religion in polite company.” …
@bethvogt This isn’t the blog post I’d originally written for today. Seven weeks have passed since my friend’s death by suicide. My sadness is sometimes a dull ache; at other times my heart breaks all over again. Last night I realized September is National Suicide Awareness Month, also known as Suicide Prevention Month. I couldn’t ignore the God-prompt to set …
Have you ever been treated like someone’s personal fly paper? Not sure what I’m talking about? I can explain. Last week, my daughter, Christa, who is back at college, texted and said one of her friends wanted to “chat.” Anybody else see an instant red flag when a friend says, “Can we chat?” but gives no hint as to what …
@bethvogt A few weeks ago, I applied for long term health insurance. After all the ups and downs we’ve had with my mother-in-law’s care, my husband, Rob, and I want to do as much as we can to ease things in the future for our adult children. Last week, the company denied my application. Okay then. Then the real …
@bethvogt Life stopped abruptly for me last week, thanks to unrelenting muscle spasms in my jaw. Forget powering through the pain – sleeping was the wiser choice, curling up in my bed with either a heating pad or ice pack pressed to my face. Not how I planned to spend the week. Several days in, I was in bed – …
@bethvogt Yesterday I was praying about this blog post, having pretty much determined I wouldn’t write one for today. And yes, I always pray about my blog posts. I told God if I didn’t have an idea by five o’clock, I wouldn’t write one. No harm, no foul. I’d just figure he was giving me the week off. Five minutes …
@bethvogt My youngest daughter, Christa and I had an argument two weeks ago. Arguing is unusual for us. It’s unusual for me to argue with any of my adult children. That said, a rather intense verbal wrangling occurred, with both of us saying, “You wanna’ go?” at some point. It sounds better when an almost 20-year-old says it. Christa here. …
