@bethvogt I’m five days into focusing on my One Word for 2022. A quick reminder, because you’re not responsible to remember my One Word: I’m focusing on the word pray. Pray, not prayer. I’m specific about the difference between the two words. Prayer is a noun, a word referring to a person, place, or thing. Pray is a verb, …
What Do We See When We Focus on the Haze?
A heavy brown haze has hung over my hometown of Colorado Springs for several weeks now, often completely obscuring the view of Pikes Peak. Smoke has blown in from the wildfires in western states, particularly the Dixie Fire, which is now the largest single fire in California history. The weather app on my phone includes an air quality alert, just …
Choosing not to Fix Someone Who is Struggling
@bethvogt It’s so difficult to see someone we love struggle. When a family member or friend is hurting, so often we want to rush in and fix the situation for them. Figure out some way to make everything better. If we can figure out the magic equation to make everything better … Poof! The difficult circumstances and devastating emotions overwhelming …
Sometimes We Need to Take a Bye Week
I decided to take a bye week instead of posting a blog today. For those of you who aren’t sports fans, a bye week is a term used where each team — for example, a national football team — is scheduled to have one week near the middle of the season where they do not play a game. Today is …
Choosing to Stress or Choosing to Trust
@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 – …
Choosing Honesty and Hope for the Difficult Days
@bethvogt I struggled to write this blog post. For the better part of Tuesday, I thought I just wouldn’t write anything. The hours kept ticking away, and I kept tossing aside possible topics. And at ten o’clock Tuesday night I started typing words. Just how honest would I be? Life’s been hard the past few days – the kind of …
Reading Between the Lines of the Serenity Prayer
@bethvogt (With acknowledgement to Reinhold Neibuhr (1892-1971), who wrote the Serenity Prayer.) God grant me the serenity Help me to stay calm. To not yell at my family no matter how much longer we’re quarantined together or say out loud all the snarky comments I’m thinking, even if I do think they’re funny. to accept the things I cannot change …
A Thanksgiving Prayer
O, heavenly Father: We thank thee for food and remember the hungry. We thank the for health and remember the sick. We thank the for friends an remember the friendless. We thank the for freedom and remember the enslaved. May these remembrances stir us to service, that thy gifts to us may be used for others. Amen. …
Choosing to Realize Being “Good and Mad” is All Wrong
@bethvogt I almost got into an argument with a good friend yesterday – one of my best friends, as a matter of fact. But I hit a huge roadblock on my way to getting “good and mad.” I was lining up all my reasons for being angry and staying that way, and then I got up to walk around my …
Choosing to Open Our Hearts to Encouragement
@bethvogt Some stories are worth retelling. This is one of those stories. It’s a true story, one I love to share with others because what happened 21 years ago changed me and influences me to this day. Let me tell you why I love hummingbirds. *** After eight years living in Niceville, FL (yes, Niceville), my roots ran deep into …
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