More than a Check List Are you a list maker? What about setting goals for the year? I am definitely a list maker, but I don’t usually set yearly goals. This year, though, I did make a list of things I wanted to work on. For work, I wrote: Stay focused and organized. Be intentional for God. Personally, I wrote: Grow closer to God. Get healthy. Spend time with family. Pay off debt. Connect with others. I have this list taped to my desktop in my office so I can see it every day.

Trusting God with our loved ones I have struggled with anxiety at different times in my life. In those moments, I found myself focusing on the "what ifs" and everything that could happen. Negative thoughts would swirl around in my mind, and I would become fearful of things that might never even happen. As you can imagine, I often talked myself out of doing certain things because of those fears. Then I had kids. Now those anxious thoughts didn't just revolve around me or my hu

Tuned to the Harmony We have all heard music in one form or another, and when we listen to it, we naturally follow the melody because it is the most prominent part that we hear. It feels natural to follow. But the moment you try to switch to the harmony, it becomes more difficult. You begin to question whether you've found it or if it even sounds right. It can feel unstable. Your pitch isn't necessarily bad (maybe), your ear is just tuned to the melody instead of the harmony.

God is THE Light I have read Genesis many times, and every time I’m amazed by the account of creation. One thing that has always stood out to me is that God created light before He created the sun, moon, and stars. Genesis 1:3-5 says, “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness he called ‘night.’ And there was evening, and there was morning

Trust in the Lord Trust—that’s a word that brings a variety of reactions. There are people we can think of immediately when we hear it. There’s that cringe feeling we get when trust has been broken. Then there are those relationships that fall somewhere in between. I think most of us fall in the middle. There are people we know we can trust, but at the same time, the thought of learning to trust someone new feels like a lot of work, and we kind of just go, “Ugh, I’m good.” Th

When We Know Better Last night at our family game night, we were playing Scrabble, and one of my sons played a word. We knew the word wasn't spelled correctly, but we also knew that the Scrabble dictionary sometimes allows alternate spellings, so we let it go. After he played and we moved on with the game we decided to check it, and our suspicions were confirmed. We then spent about ten minutes discussing the situation because my husband had already played off the incorrectly