Gratitude
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moreWhen You Don’t Want A New Year but A New You. . . {Camera Giveaway} *UPDATED with winner
On Tuesday, January 01 st, 2013How Maggie Pluim knew to ask that question, I’ll never know. Grace has it’s unending ways. True, I had told her straight up that I had no intention of showing up for the church’s annual New Year’s Eve party with Marian Brubacher’s caramel popcorn and Viola Gingerich’s raspberry punch and Mr. Vaness’ countless rounds of Dutch Blitz. R...
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more2012: A Year in Photos {and 7 Links for 2013}
On Saturday, December 29 th, 2012From calendar page to calendar page, the moments are our lives and the years are blinks. {just a few photos from the farm and 2012:} ...
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moreThe Truth about Sandy Hook: Where is God when Bad Things Happen?
On Monday, December 17 th, 2012When the guy with the glasses and guitar stands at the front of the chapel, in the middle of Nowhere Country, and tells us all to stand, I’ve got no idea if I can. I don’t know if legs can hold a heart this heavy. I don’t know if anyone can stand straight in a fallen world and why don’t we all just fall on our skinned and bloodied knees? When grief is deepest, words ar...
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moreWhat Your Christmas Needs to Really be Merry
On Monday, December 10 th, 2012The Practice of the Pause And on a whirling world, in the middle of the blur, you just hold a pause — at the end of one smeared moment — and before the next, holding the moments right to their very end with the full length...
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moreThe Grateful Christmas Project: 7 Ways to have more Grateful Kids this Christmas
On Monday, December 03 rd, 2012I‘m thinking it’s almost a dozen years now, nothing under the Christmas tree here. Strange, the way children teach men. The whole crazy, unexpected thing, it started at bedtime one year, I do remember that. Smoothing back hair, kissing foreheads. I had gifts to wrap. So, I pulled up the blankets. Prayers. And then, when I’m at the door, one h...
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moreHow Beards & Men & Random Acts of Kindness Can Change the World
On Tuesday, November 27 th, 2012I can’t ever say that kissing him before was painful. I mean, nothing about him ever scratched abrasive and rough, nothing like the grit side of an unused emory board, the backside of a knot of burrs. The man just grabbed me around the waist and most days the warm side of him feels only like a few days growth, like he’d be tough enough to drive those whiskers right ...
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moreFinding The Perfect Gift {Free Holiday Printable}
On Thursday, November 22 nd, 2012…. (excerpt) But now had arrived and unwrapped like a gift — The embrace at the door, the loud laughter in the twilight greying, the clock ticking down after the still — all unearned — her here at all. So after the turkey and Aunt Eileen’s pie, she’d written it down and taped it up, to remember when everything would spin fast fo...
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moreWhen Thanksgiving & the Holidays Just Seem Hard
On Wednesday, November 21 st, 2012‘Whatever.” The Wednesday morning before turkey and pie and black Friday flyers, I wake up to this smothering of fog and this teen muttering it through the kitchen: “Whatever.” And what do you say but that’s not quite the way to start off the day, and he shrugs his shoulders and slams the bathroom door behind him, and I get it. ...
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moreThe One Holiday that God Demands is All of our Days?
On Monday, November 19 th, 2012We’re laughing like these crazy loons out in the middle of a field of corn. The Farmer’s got hold of that combine seat like he’s on this one-time shot at the whole round moon. It’s harvest and a time of thanksgiving and the holy cusp of Advent and you won’t pass by this way again and the corn just keeps on coming. ...
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more6 Wondrous Links for your Thanksgiving Week
On Saturday, November 17 th, 2012A Thanksgiving Psalm: Psalm 100 {The Message} OOn your feet now — applaud God! Bring a gift of laughter, sing yourselves into his presence. Know this: God is God, and God, God. He made us; we didn’t make him. We’re His people, His well-tended sheep. Enter with...
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moreA {Christian} Family Thanksgiving Activity: The Thanks Giving Tree {Free Printable}
On Wednesday, November 07 th, 2012Leaves aren’t ever purely green and not everything is as it seems. The kids and I walk through the orchard and November. That’s what I tell the kids. That all summer, the chlorophyll of the leaf, all that green, absorbs the sun and releases food and it this cycle of chlorophyll that cloaks the leaves’ pure ...
