Happy Mother's Day... "Every year my children ask me the same question," wrote a mother on her Facebook page. "After thinking about it, I decided I'd give them my real answer." She continued: "What do I want for Mother's Day? I want you. I want you to keep coming around. I want you to bring your kids around. I [...]
Good morning... "Sue - your tears messages resound with me," writes another subscriber. "I am still the primary caregiver for my 93 year old mother. She has regressed terribly fast. I have quit my part time job. I am always seeking God's direction on how best to adapt her home into her private nursing home. She can no longer [...]
Good morning… A well-loved subscriber from Jacksonville, Florida often sends me words of loving encouragement. This week she sent me the 5.4.17 blog of Maureen Ahearn Cully entitled "Begin with the End in Mind." I resonate with these words as our oldest son graduates from college today and my youngest daughter graduates from high school next Sunday. I am [...]
Good morning... When I googled the term "semi-permeable boundaries" for yesterday's post, I happened upon this article by Dr. Neill Neill entitled: "Personal Boundaries and Healthy Relationships." The wisdom shared here is very important as we consider how we are made in the image of God and empowered by the Holy Spirit to follow in Jesus' footsteps into healthy [...]
Good morning... When I was training in my twenties to be a Marriage and Family Therapist, I learned a lot about boundaries. Some families have rigid boundaries. Secrets and unresolved pain grow like weeds in the petri dish of a closed system. Some families are open systems, where anything goes all the time, stripping members of privacy and protection. [...]
Good morning... Through a series of mishaps, we met in the grocery store parking lot, me loading my trunk, she driving up in her SUV. I was delayed since I went back for a few items I had forgotten my first time through the check out line. "Ugh." She had forgotten to take home some items she had purchased, [...]
Good morning... When asked to teach a Sunday school class at Peachtree Road Methodist, I was given the topic. "How best do we pass along faith to our young adult children?" God shepherded the spirited group through an interesting lesson, creatively cultivating the soil of our hearts. After unpacking a plethora of parenting possibilities, we shifted our focus from [...]
Good morning… I just got up from my morning ritual of quiet time with God and my open Bible, a random pen and my current journal. For my spiritual direction training program, our cohort of classmates has been walking slowly through Larry Warner's book Journey with Jesus, an adaptation of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, Exercises written to [...]
Good morning... The scheduled speaker reached out to me, asking if I would be a part of Tuesday's Lovett Moms in Prayer gathering, a group Julie Harlan had helped to facilitate weekly since her oldest son was in kindergarten. She emailed: "It should be a morning of celebrating our sweet Julie with prayer and you were so close to [...]
Good morning... "I always stand in awe of how my morning readings are woven together," she wrote as she shared with me Richard Rohr's meditation from yesterday morning. That very same day, God had been schooling me in this truth: "Comparison kills. Conversation brings life." Our heart raises the white flag of surrender as we exchange our will for [...]
