-
Do You Need to “Leave It”?
Several years ago my daughter had a very vivacious, curious dog named Tilly. Tilly oozed personality and was always a big topic of conversation around the dinner table. One of her delights was to pick up things off the floor that she knew she wasn’t supposed to have and then run and hide under the bed. She thought this trick was so much fun. In order to get her to drop her latest “prize” she was told to “leave it.” Although she was often reluctant, she usually dropped whatever she had in her mouth to slink off and find more trouble. I was recently thinking about her behavior and…
-
How To Re-ignite The Fire
Remember the day you gave your life to Christ? You were filled with such joy and excitement! It felt like you were ready to take on the world and share with everyone you encountered the greatness of Jesus. I’m sure just thinking about it right now is probably nostalgic, what happened? What happened to that fire inside of you? Where did it go? All is great at the beginning but somewhere in our journey our fire starts to die without us realizing it and within a blank of an eye we can be left fireless, and stuck in our relationship with God. This happens to most of us, but…
-
The Sound of the Brass Bell
As the ornately embossed brass bell rang out in the orderly classroom, every little soldier knew what that meant. Everyone was to be seated with eyes to the front, feet on the floor, and mouths zipped shut. Any nonconformity was simply not tolerated. Children quickly understood that foolishness would result in the crack of a ruler on the hand of an unruly classmate. Although the fear of The Lord is the beginning of wisdom, shaking in your boots all day long in school, afraid of a teacher tirade was no place for learning. Imagine what I must have felt when I joined that first grade class, changing schools for the…
-
The Night the Principal Wore Camouflage
The quaint French Louisiana town of Ville Platte was such a welcoming home town for a recently transplanted Texas family. Scrumptious food, friendly people, and a Cajun culture that enchanted us drew us into this unfamiliar way of life. One of my favorite spots was one of the many local meat markets where the little old man who owned the market spoke to me in French (I don’t know any French) and probably enjoyed seeing the bewildered look on my face. Buying our first Louisiana home in the piney woods north of Chicot State Park, our closest town was Ville Platte (which means flat town), which was ten miles away traveling…
-
Can Dreams Really Come True?
Back in the late 1960s, our East Texas school district made some interesting adjustments, or at least that’s how this third grader interpreted the situation. Instead of neighborhood elementary schools, the district divided the students up by grade instead of where they happened to live. Housing all of the third and fourth grade students in the former “black elementary school”, the transition from segregated to integrated schools happened without much fanfare. Because of the way my mother had raised me, I didn’t really think much of the change. What I didn’t realize is what was going on in that small town behind the scenes. A local eye doctor still had…
-
Tangled-Up Messes
As she handed me a purple tangled-up mess of what once was her long, flowing hairpiece, Sarah said, “Mommy, can you help me? I tried and tried, but I just can’t get the knots out by myself.” It looked pretty hopeless to me, so I replied, “I’ll work on it, but I wish you’d brought it to me sooner! Trying to fix it yourself made it much worse.” Just as soon as I finished speaking, I heard God whisper, “That’s what you do to Me.” Convicted by the boomerang effect of my words, I received a moment of mercy and grace that needed to be extended to my five-year-old daughter.…
-
Patsy Clairmont and Me
It was a dark and stormy night… No, it was a gloomy, rainy night… Ok, maybe just a dark night in a rental car driving on a winding road I’d never traveled before with another woman I had just met a few minutes ago. It was an adventure I had been looking forward to for several months. A trip to meet Patsy Clairmont at her home for a writing workshop. I’ve loved Patsy Clairmont since the early days when her speaking engagements were aired on Focus on the Family radio broadcasts. I’d read her books and seen her at many Women of Faith events. Recently, I had become one of…
-
Our First Date
After letting everyone know that I married my first date, it occurred to me that folks may be interested in our first date. Fitting for me, even still, our date didn’t go exactly as I had planned. It was a Saturday, October 10, 1975, and I had just gotten off work at my grandmother’s dress shop. The rest of my family was out of town, due to return sometime that evening. When my grandmother dropped me off at home, I realized that my house key was missing. Oops! How was I to get ready for my very first date when I couldn’t get into my house? Fortunately, I brought home…
-
I Married My First Date
It was a steamy August afternoon when I spotted the tall handsome senior drummer the first day of marching band practice. One of my giddy fellow freshman girlfriends pointed him out to me, since she had a crush on him. Of course, he had no idea any of us wide-eyed ninth graders existed as he strutted on the field a head above all the rest of the band. The summer sun had kissed him in the color of bronze, and his long locks of brown still celebrated a break from the school dress code. Wow, I thought, how could my friend ever think he would notice an awkward fourteen year…
-
Honor for Dishonor
My morning routine is always the same. Alarm goes off, stumble out of bed, go to the bathroom, shuffle into the kitchen, make coffee (thankfully my Keurig makes it instantly), get back into bed, drink my coffee, turn on the local morning news program, and check email and Facebook. My Sweetheart brings me breakfast in bed before I start the crazed morning rush to get ready for work. Every day it’s the same old thing. BUT, one morning, I was knocked off my rocker by a post on Facebook by my father. It blew me away and sent me on a tailspin I had not been on since my struggle…
