I love to give gifts to family members and friends. The funny thing is, in the past, I often gave a gift and accompanied it with an apology. “If you don’t like it, you can exchange it.” “If that’s not exactly what you wanted, there’s a gift receipt in there …” Oftentimes, the person hadn’t even seen what I’d given …
In Others’ Words: A Simple Hope
I know many of us are counting the days down to Christmas — that gift-giving day that out-gives all other days in the year. And if you’re wondering, there are 47 days until Christmas. 4-7. And yet, not all of us celebrate Christmas. But gift-giving? It’s a year-round activity, what with birthdays and anniversaries and even “for no special reason” …
In Others’ Words: The Importance of Dreams
Someone came up to me the other day and said, “I didn’t know you were an author!” I smiled and said, “Yes, I am.” Whenever someone says something like this to me, I pause and remember I’m living my dream. This crazy, challenging, some-days-I’m-not-sure-I can-do-it career? It’s my childhood dream come true. And sometimes, I forget it all started because …
In Others’ Words: An Opportune Time
So often we look at the time we have and think of what we’re not accomplishing. And we stress out. Maybe we could change how we think about the time we have. Be more positive about our days — the hours and minutes we are blessed with. Today is an opportune time to: be kind. laugh with family and …
In Others’ Words: The Secret to Living Well
My mother-in-law turns 100 years old tomorrow. Yes, you read that correctly: She will be One. Hundred. Years. Old. Her father was one of the last homesteaders in Montana. And she was born in a one-room log cabin — that her father built — during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. She rode a horse to school, which was also a one-room …
In Others’ Words: A Work in Progress
As I moved the graphic over into this blog post, two words stood out to me in the quote: in progress. “In progress” means motion. Forward motion. We’re moving toward something — a goal. A dream. There’s action happening. When I was deciding on the graphic to use for the quote, I skimmed through lots of photos of staircases and …
In Others’ Words: Life has No Remote
I am always losing track of the TV remotes. Remotes, as in plural. Does anyone have just one remote anymore? We have one to watch TV. One for the DVD player. One for the sound bar. And another remote for … well, I don’t really know. It may be for the standing fan, but it gets put in the TV …
In Others’ Words: Living More Richly in the Moments
Stress is getting the best of me these days. We all experience times where we get overwhelmed and a bit frantic. Moments race by with things left undone and our frustrations mount. I don’t want to surrender to these kind of moments, as author Anne Morrow Lindbergh suggests in today’s quote. “If you let yourself be absorbed completely to the …
In Others’ Words: Rowing Through the Hard Times
Sometimes life is hard. And sometimes when life is hard, don’t we just want to quit? To stick with the boat analogy, when we’re stuck in the middle of nowhere and nothing’s happening — no wind filling our sails — it’s easy to just sit down and wait it out. Sometimes we tell us ourselves we don’t need a lot …
In Others’ Word: Don’t Jump — to Conclusions, That Is!
We all have different goals. Different dreams. Different opportunities. But no matter what we’re aiming for, we all hope to succeed. I’ve attended lots of writers conferences in years past. (Not lately. It’s been more about my daughter’s volleyball tournaments — and I’m okay with that.) When I’m with writers, we talk about the books we’re writing. The books we …