Whether small annoyances or huge distractions, you don’t have to keep living with those negative habits, problems, and issues that affect you and those around you. Naming the issue may be hard but breaking it off is the challenge that reveals your character, fortitude, and grit.
Passion and peace are both drivers, but they generally lead us to different places. Pause and consider where you are going, and why, before charging forward.
In my limited, but nevertheless real experiences with abuse and powerlessness, I have learned that unless powerlessness is expressed in some form of power it remains within you. It becomes as internally destructive as we are seeing across our nation externally. How do we find a way to address this systemic powerlessness in a way that is more than loud? In a way that is constructive and makes a lasting change? A true change?
What happens when everything that seems normal and stable changes? Life changed that day. Then, life was different. We looked at each other differently. We were Americans. “For” each other. “With” each other. In unity. Then, we weren’t.
Some may call it a daydream. Others a vision. I don’t know what really happened to me in the shower this morning…but it happened. And the weight of it still hangs in the air.
With eyes shut, head back, hot water running over my head and down my body, all awareness of standing in my bathroom shower left and it was as if I was in a corner of a dark room watching an interview take place between an elderly woman and a young male journalist.
Ricky Van Shelton released a country song back in 1991 called “Keep It Between the Lines.” It was released less than a year before my daddy passed away, but I don’t remember listening to it much before he died. After he was gone, it became my anthem. Out on those country roads, driving for the…
As a little girl, I remember my daddy teaching me to drive. I was only 8 years old, and I was terrified. But lessons he taught me on those small dirt roads in the Texas Panhandle still remain with me today. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize just how much of an influence they were until after…
You want to make a difference. I want to make a difference. Even if you don’t know what difference you want to make, you still want to make one.
I have yet to meet a person who wanted to grow up and influence no one, have no impact, and just get by until they die. Those are not the dreams in any child’s heart, nor are they the dreams in any adult’s heart of hearts.
Powerful and ongoing, the impact of words continues to amaze me. In 2005, I met a new friend who shared with me that at the end of every year she and two other friends would get together and share a word that each of them had chosen to be “their word” for the following year. Just one word. How their current word was playing out in their lives was also shared. My question was, How in the world do you choose one word? [more]
I began this year with a quieter soul. Intentionally. What I mean by that is I decided to deliberately listen to my thoughts, pay attention to my desires, and stay aware of my emotions throughout the day…and respond accordingly. This has quieted me. Brought more peace.