Picket Fences

With sickness in the house, hospital visits for family these last few weeks, taxes, and doing re-writes on my most current book, Lost Song, this blog has been put on the wayside. So, I am bringing out an oldie from a few years ago to share with you once again. I hope you enjoy it and know that you truly are someone's special Valentine...  I was reading the history of Valentine’s Day, and from what I found, romance is not its true root beginning. So they say. From the information I gathered, it was a day to honor a Christian martyr that was named Valentine. Now a martyr is someone who faces death rather than renouncing his religious beliefs. I’d say there had to be a lot of love and conviction to face death for anything. Still, it’s not romantic love. I also found various versions of one legend that I particularly like. I’ll give you the paraphrased version. There was this mean, horrible emperor who wanted men to be in his military, but he couldn’t get people to sign up...

The women’s group I attend, called “Serious Coffee” at my church is currently doing a study on the book of James. James 1:14 really struck me “Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.” I thought to myself what are my deepest desires that would lead to sinful actions and cause sin to grow? Not that I don’t already have enough weaknesses that I deal with throughout the day, but I really wanted to know if my desires were leading me away from God’s plan for my life. Was I being misled, like it says NOT to be in James 1: 16? A couple of months ago, during a conversation with a friend, I shared how I was praying about an issue and what I was doing to try to resolve it. No matter what I did or tried, nothing came through. The issue was still there. She said, “You better watch out, you may end up getting an Ishmael instead of an Isaac.” Well, that...

When my daughter was really young she was given a Cinderella doll that sang a couple of songs about your dreams coming true. She also had a sing along toy and a hand held Cinderella game that played the same song. At the end of the song, of the sing along toy, Cinderella gets her dream puppy. One day I found my daughter in her room with a sad look on her face. I asked her what was wrong and she told me the song wasn’t true. That dreams don’t come true. She explained to me she had dreamed of getting a puppy and it never happened. How do you explain to a three or four year old that they are “only” a few years old? It just so happened that after years of hoping, I had recently seen my dream come true of being published. So I was able to explain that sometimes dreams don’t happen right away. And look how old mommy was before her dream came true. Well, to a little kid, my age can seem, well…a long ways away. I also explained I wasn’t a mommy until later in life. And yes, it fel...