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Life is certainly one of our more eloquent teachers!

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When I wade through the mundane and the ordinary there is always good, solid wisdom to be had. Profound is usually smiling just below the surface of daily ritual, waiting for those three seconds of whole hearted awareness we’re capable of. This is where God often speaks uninterrupted. And this is where I like most to listen, and on a good day, take notes.

Passing Judgment - Passing judgment is one of those really lame things we all do. Why on earth do we judge each other so much?

Mind Over Media - I really would rather not write about movies. I love movies and always have. There's nothing like a well-crafted storyline packaged into a glorious hour or two and beamed down off a huge movie screen.

Revisiting Schindler - If there are a few things in life that I really enjoy, sleeping in a nice hotel and eating at a really top restaurant are two of them. Fortunate for me, I am not alone in this.

Happy With Yourself - A good friend of mine has this former life that really haunts her. In her past life she was living with a man who criticized her flaws and ripped her selfimage into a million little pieces.

Busted for Thinking It - As tiresome as it can be to try and behave, I find myself ridiculously enamored with maintaining my own outward performances.

Are You Trustworthy? - If you think your kids were born with an innate sense that they should trust you blindly, you are dead wrong.

Jesus and Tree-huggers - I'm not the tree-hugging type. Maybe I should be. I know that how we care for this earth says more about who we are than we probably think.

Wisdom From the Gym - The happy pill I take each day is at my local gym. The older I get, the less I can do without it.

Cake Interrupted - In this small world where you cannot grow up without being thrown around a bit, I have always had a fascination with not-yet-baked cakes.

Owning Your Talk - Have you ever wondered why people will not hear what you have to say? Especially the difficult or deeply meaningful stuff about God and the state of things?

Seeing In Color - Have you ever wondered why some people drive you nuts and others don't?

Yeah for Pets! - One month ago this week, our sweet Daisy the Great Dane had puppies. Not five, not nine, but ELEVEN of them! I will never forget it.

Mixed-Age Marriages - A friend recently asked what I thought of the practice of hitching a rather old soul to a rather young one. What a great question. Little did he know I have a boatload of thoughts on the matter.

The Work of Parents - A year or so back, a friend of mine lost her dad. He was not a good dad, as dads go. Her mom kicked him out when she was in diapers, after a long roller-coaster of affairs, so she never really saw him until high school.

OK, I'm a Stepmom - I think it was that long forgotten philosopher Euripides who wrote, "better a servant than a stepmother." Although it's not the easiest of roles to transition into, I do not share this sentiment at all.

For Crying Out Loud - There's nothing quite like a good cry. Just think a minute about the wonder of it all. Water comes out of your face and your whole psyche feels much better for it.

Christians Drive You Nuts? - Are Christians uptight and seemingly obsessed with being right? In my experience, yes, many are. And why is that?

What Comes After Dying? - We seek life. We all have this innate yearning for more. Jesus even noted this about us—that there is a sense of eternity within us all.

Before You Go and Get Married - There is one small question I haunt my single friends with whenever their prospects for marriage loom near. Is their special friend a grower? A what?

Beyond Self-Help - After a grand emotional enlightenment, I often catch myself wondering why on earth the Bible didn’t just list off what it was I had just experienced and how to get there. God, couldn't you have made...

Pinning Down God - Pinned down by a person dear to me, I watched a documentary on the raging domination of Darwinian Theology in the world of science today.

What About Bob? - So how self-aware are you? Do you own the weirdness that keeps cropping up in your emotional garden? Do you name the weeds and pull them out?

Leaving Tennis to Serena - Why on earth do we spar with our words? Why can a perfectly good and humane line of reasoning sent our way resurrect our worst habits of self-preservation and lead to an all-out verbal war?

Why Married Couples Fight - I believe at the heart of every deeply dysfunctional conversation, whether you do it "nice" and restrained or just trumpeting your fury with the raging carelessness of a bull, are three lies.

Making Good From Bad - Probably the most profound thing God has done for our planet is to make amazing, redemptive lemonade from all our evil lemons.

Hello Now! - When a friend asked me if I had any wisdom on how to make the most of today, living in the now and milking it for all it's worth, well, I had to chuckle to myself. Me expound on this?

Blurring Truth - I saw a movie recently. It was a remake. "The Day the Earth Stood Still." This kind of movie is not alone—there are many like it.

Trauma-Mama - Life will be as traumatic for your kids as you make it. If you make a big deal out of falling down, your kid will fear falling, not because of falling down, but because you've taught them to fear it.

A Lovely Gift - We may not know why or how, but God will speak over us what we need to do, if we ask and listen.

Shallow Living - Sometimes I wonder how much more shallow our culture can become before it disintegrates. Jesus said in Matthew that we should not worry about stuff like what we’ll eat, drink or wear.

Beyond Judgment - What happens when we are judged for what we have judged? if you are remotely interested in how this whole judge and be judged principle plays out read on.

My Teacher, Mr. Beaver - There was zero doubt in my mind that I had loved beavers. My best memories from early childhood are falling asleep to stories read aloud by my dad about Mr. Beaver and his friends.

Velcro-ed To Heaven - Losing a loved one can really jump-start faith. When we lost one of our little preemie twins, Isabella, at twenty-six weeks, the whole wide world came to a crashing stop.

Don't Be Stupid - My sister has this friend who married a guy who was great at teaching the Bible. He was very pious and they married fast.

Divine Appointment - I'll never forget my education in the matters of God's Divine appointments. It happened in my first year as a pastor. I was heading to a meeting with my friend, Charlene, when my cell phone rang.

Crawling is OK - Yesterday I learned a wild bit of information about us humans and how we grow. My education took place at my little micro-premie, Isaac’s first motor skills evaluation.

Will Kirby Be in Heaven? - Today was quite a bad day for my husband and I. Kirby the coolest of our cats had to be put down.

Heartbreak Hotel - Doing nothing to protect someone we see headed for danger actually ushers in the same outcome as leading them into danger.

Interrupting Rituals - Sometimes it feels like we Christians are intellectual giants and at the same time, emotional idiots.

Who Takes Care of Who? - Every one of us is different in the way of needs. I can't look to anyone else but myself when it comes to figuring out what my needs really are and meeting them.

What is Home Anyway? - My sister and her husband just came back from a week of rest. And I mean rest with a capital R-E-S-T.

Huge Personal Choices - How do you treat yourself? Do you love your neighbor as yourself? How well you love yourself determines how well you are doing.

Beyond Behavior - Contrary to the belief that we'll all stop acting out when there's enough pressure telling us to stop it, Jesus actually taught the opposite.

Love Wins - Paul the Apostle points out again and again that love is the best means to any end. He actually is quoted saying that the only way we can overpower evil is to do good.

Me? A Slave? - Jane is a slave. Jane sold herself into slavery, and for all the juicy perks of slavedom, is having a really tough time getting herself to the place where she wants her freedom.

Anti-Debt Rant - I must admit that I’m still in shock over the mammoth bailouts I have read about in the paper. They defy logic, sound absurdly too bad to be true, and yet, hello America! This is reality.

Sick of Playing God? - There are two kinds of people on this planet: Those who actually live under the pretense that there is a God, and those who do not.

Broken Trust - I have a dear friend who has lately been driving me crazy. She has this one-liner that just rubs me the wrong way every time she says it.

Wedded Bliss Forever - I have often been bewildered at the knowing looks I get when I babble on about how great it is to be married.

In Search of Forgiveness - After explaining forgiveness as best I could at a large Christian gathering a while back, a large line formed to speak with me. Everyone seemed convicted, until...

My Sacred Cows - I used to turn my nose up at the people Moses led out of Egypt. For all the miraculous-ness of packing into the wilderness with Almighty God, they melted their wedding rings and made a shiny cow to worship.

Imagine This - When John Lennon got us all imagining what a wonderful world this could be quite some years back, I was hooked.

Healing That Shows - A few months back I spoke at a retreat. Unpacking the incredible teachings of Jesus around wholeness and community. We had a grand time.

Life Lessons - Usually in life I get one example per lesson. So when I get two for one I pay attention. This two-for-one started with a trip to the bank.

Why We All Scream - Have you ever asked a cashier to bag your veggies separate from the other stuff in your cart, and watched him come unglued?

Understanding Why - For those of us who believe our sixty or so years here to be a blink in the realm of forever here's a few questions you might want to ask yourself from time to time.

Is Anybody Having Fun Yet? - Where is all the fun? Where are those afternoons where we don't accomplish anything, but hang out and laugh and ramble and just be?

Learning From Daisy and Mo - Wow. Whoever said buy a puppy to prepare for kids was on the money. I'd like to add, buy two puppies for double the education!

Learning to Play Golf - Thanks to my husband's generous boss, we spent the last few days lounging at one of Oregon's premier Golf resorts—or was it Golf Communities?

Rounding Up An Expensive Tree - I can't help but cringe every time I look down off my porch on this beautiful eight-foot-some-kind-of-high-end-Japanese-hybrid-evergreen we have growing in our yard.

Learning to Say No - I probably shouldn't write this down for a few years, you know, until it's a distant memory. It all started with a move-in-issues conversation my husband and I delved into many moons ago.

Enough With Playing Nice - I have always thought of myself as quite kind and good. I don't scream out loud, I don't swear out loud, and I really would rather everyone smile and be civil.

The Speed of the Farm - Life to date, I think the whole speed of the natural world has been lost on me. You know, like how you can never see a flower actually bloom or watch your little puppy's head get bigger.

Wicked Atticus - I never thought I'd holler at the top of my lungs at any animal. That all changed when we got our puppies.

The Day the Blaming Stopped - If it isn't enough that we humans are consistently faulty, we also seem to relish attaching our messes to anyone but ourselves.

Confessions of a City Lover - If you had told me I'd soon be living in the woods with lots of mud and dogs and cats and a big huge barn, well, I'd probably have laughed.

Growing Up - You'd not know it by looking at him, but Moses is a wee seven months old. In our appearance driven world, people just can't seem to get why he's so awkward and shy.

The Center of You - Believe it or not, Jesus would rather you express your heart, even if there's unhealthiness there, He's not threatened.

Love and Trust - If you can nail down what I'm about to unpack here, and convince yourself to practice it, you will find yourself able to navigate the world of relationships without confusion.

The Practice of Elohim - The name God in the Hebrew is Elohim, and it is a plural noun. It's Them, and can be translated The Mighty Ones.

Is There Really a Devil? - We can't see him, hear him or even smell him. Many God-believers think the little red dude with the pitchfork to be a fairytale. Sure he's not little, not red, and not pitching a fork, but real, he is.

Easy and Light - My slow-pokiness in all things spiritual has frustrated me for as long as I can remember. I just couldn't seem to change or grow fast enough.

In Sync With the Universe - If you're serious about actually growing up and becoming a mature human, there's probably a paradigm shift in store for you. It's part of our passage from youth to adulthood.

Hell What? - I don't think there's anything within Christianity that has bugged me more than this incredible belief that people will burn forever.

My Journey Out - Is there a part of you hidden or unknown? It's your birthright to explore and express all that God has put in you.

Step Away From the Gavel - Of all the habits I've had to relinquish over the years, judging people has been the hardest one to let go of.

The Nifty Book of Proverbs - If you've ever read the Bible, you know that the book of Proverbs is one of the more straightforward, in-your-face kind of enlightening reads you'll ever find.

Do You Wish You Could Sing? - So you really do wish you could sing? You are wishing for something that is already yours. Really. It's part of the package—your package, that is.

New Spirit, Old Flesh - It's not an accident that Jesus chose the words (talking to a well-versed and very confused theologian, Nicodemas) born again to describe the whole transition from autonomous human to human filled with God Himself and in His circle.

Ready to Vote? - As non-committal as I am about who I'll vote for here in the near future, I am much bothered by the deep associations people are making between Christianity and politics.

Stairway to Heaven? - Completely tired of treating failure as a tumble down the stairs from God, Heaven and all that is good, I have a new tool I've admitted into my file of helpful spiritual visuals.

The Bottom Line - A friend of mine asked me a while back what I'd say if asked what the bottom line in life is. What is central and essential to life being lived, and lived well. What a question.

David and Goliath - It's a great story. David raises the bar for all of us. No matter that it was written thousands of years ago, modern-day applications abound.

The Whole Truth - Can you distinguish between head truth and heart truth? From what I've seen there's always two levels to every interchange. First, there are the actual things...

Pregnancy Tests and Stuff - After blasting through four pregnancy tests—yes, four—and still getting the little one-liner that means one is not pregnant, my husband and I decided to give it a break.

A Mammoth Revelation - I'll never forget the day I realized just how immature I really was in the ways of God—love. It happened one afternoon as I sloughed through a pile of ideas.

Why Pray? - For all of you who've thought about God being all powerful and then wondered how on earth your not-all-powerful prayers could help Him, fear not, I have uncovered a gloriously simple and practical explanation of things that forever sets this question to rest.

Just a Nail - If it's really true that I was knit together by God's spirit in my mother's womb, then wow, I probably have something significant to offer planet earth.

Bird-brains - When my dear husband promised to create a studio out of an old shack for my writing purposes, wow, I was elated. But alas, it's also been quite a disaster.

Breaking With Helplessness - There's a really good chance what you're about to read will sound a little too good to be true, not to mention very simple.

Good Parenting - As preposterous as it may sound to parents everywhere, I think I've come up with a two-thought solution to every mishap or misbehavior you or your kids fall into.

A Brilliant Idea - If you've never heard of Gary Smalley and you're a married Christian, well, you must live under a rock in a desert in Africa.

Why Your Kid Is Acting That Way - In case you haven't noticed, alcohol and drugs aren't the only kind of emotional painkillers known to man. We all have ways of coping. Some are just a little more hidden than others at least... hidden from our sight—not God's.

Waking Up to Trust - For all the times I've heard humans go on and on about love and how Jesus is huge on loving all people everywhere, I have never heard a single monologue on trust.

Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde? - So many of my friends have this idea that if we don´t chose to love God we will be punished forever.

Taking on the Fridge - I'm about to worry a little. Doggies are beginning to make their way, more and more into my stories. Is there too much canine energy in our house? Definitely.

Before You Crash - God created us and then the next day, a seventh day following six days of creating the natural world, He rested and called the day Sabbath...

Defending Jesus? - If I sit in church with my kids in a row and we all sing songs and look pious, and this is how I feel good about myself, my kids probably won't want to come to church when they're big and independent.

This Thing With Collecting Debt - In the teachings of Paul the apostle, it is suggested that we watch ourselves. I think his way of saying it was "walk circumspectly."

Walking in Circles - Do you want to wander in the wilderness 40 years? I'm assuming you don't have to think too long and hard before answering this question.

Letting Kids Be Kids - Some nights back a friend of mine was quite distraught with her little boy. She is divorced, and her five-year-old was drawing pictures of mommy and then scrawling out the name of his new stepmother in the margin.

My Destiny - Over the years, I've taken for granted how clearly outlined my calling on this earth is. I guess I thought it was this way for everyone. And now I'm certain that, actually it is this way for everyone.

Who Will You Love Less? - I was looking forward to a few hours of my road trip being lost in the string of people calling in to talk radio only to be blasted out of confusion by the smack down honesty of a modern day marriage guru.

"Sweet Revenge" - There is no doubt in my mind that revenge, for all of us, to some degree, feels very, very nice.

The Medicine - Clar Worley Sproul sings about love being the medicine that can cure our ills. Jesus wants to love others through you.

Praying the 5th - Have you ever wondered what the difference is between a manipulative conversation to a friend about a friend, and a good long (what Christians like to call) intercessory prayer is?

Robin Died Alone - Everything seemed to be going well for Robin. She married and landed a job in corporate America. This was her time, now she would climb up her own personal ladder of success.

Worth the Pain - I hate getting stopped by cops. Who doesn't? I'm not a speeder, yet I've had plenty of tickets.

Playing My Way - I was a missionary kid and there were only ten of us in the little mission school. I had a ball (a Christmas gift) that was the only one for miles around. This meant I had control.

Being Real - How can I know if the love I give is true love? There are actually two short questions I can ask myself that will set the record straight.

It's Not About Me - I never had to struggle very hard over whether or not I wanted to believe in reincarnation. Call me lazy, but reincarnation sounds like way too much work.

The Shack - After about three hundred people (slight exaggeration) recommended I read the book entitled The Shack, I finally found a copy and got to it.

Because He Could - What would I do if I knew I could get away with it? What would I do if I knew nobody would know or be able to stop me or punish me in the end?

About Clar - I definitely qualify to buy a house in Mr. Rogers, may he rest in peace, neighborhood! I am pretty good at brushing my teeth, combing my hair, and even using crosswalks properly, you know, only with Mr. Whitey-man.

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