writing
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moreHow to Not Miss Your Real Life Calling
On Friday, November 16 th, 2012When they cut the three right open and start pulling out the inner guts, there isn’t a sound in the room. They’re focused and silent and pulling at strings and ripping away at things and I wonder if I am doing any of this ridiculous thing right? Not the pumpkins — I could care less how we hack these three up. It’s the kids, this year, my life. ...
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moreHow to Live, Blog, Write
On Tuesday, October 23 rd, 2012Ifly this week to Allume …. Get on a plane and go to women I feel are a bit like a home to me. Who understand family and the call to blog and this daily fight for all joy in Him. And we’ll pray and we’ll laugh and we’ll talk about why we do this blogging thing and family and being real and what it means to be a follower of Christ. It&#...
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moreHow Christians May Create {And a SheSpeaks Scholarship}
On Tuesday, March 29 th, 2011On the back of used envelopes, my Grandma wrote grocery lists, and I wrote bits of my heart, right to the edge where the seam was ripped right open… The summer I was ten and stood as tall as she was small, Grandma walked straight into the Northumberland News and laid my clumsy envelope words flat out on the editor’s desk and when she told me what she’d done, I...
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moreWhat is Always the First Step, No Matter Where You Are: Where the Best Words Always Come From
On Tuesday, December 07 th, 2010Your words matter. Whether you write, speak, or simply want to connect with the hearts of those you love. My friend, Holley Gerth, and I have been talking and praying about words. How to serve with them. How to use them well. We’re writing our thoughts a series of letters and we’d love for you to be part of the conversation too. Will you join us? We’d love to ...
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moreThe Way to Feed a Hungry Heart:Letters about Serving with Words
On Tuesday, November 30 th, 2010My friend, Holley Gerth, and I have been talking about words and what they mean as we follow the Word made flesh… we invite you, our friends, to a series of letters between friends… Dearest Ann, Thank you for the words you sent my way last week in your first letter—I tucked them away in my heart like pebbles in my pocket. As we traveled the last few days I kept ...
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more2,001
On Friday, November 26 th, 2010A nd when you wake up one morning and realize you’ve scratched out 2,001 posts, you think today might be the day to just curl up quiet… :: But oh, can I just whisper this? That you’d share a bit of the walk with a messy, broken farm girl? Wildest grace… I read your every note and I pray and you mentor and gird and encourage me in a thou...
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moreSix Things Every Christian Blogger Must Really Know
On Tuesday, November 16 th, 2010Know the six things every Christian blogger should know? I’m spilling the beans… er… or whatever nervous farmer’s wives spill… in Part 3 of the closing keynote of The Relevant Blogging Conference… over here at (in)courage today... To catch the final six key elements of b...
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moreWhat is Success? Life in the Upside Down Kingdom (Relevant10 Pt 2)
On Tuesday, November 09 th, 2010What does success look like in the upside down kingdom? What is is success in blogging? in writing? in life? These were questions explored in the closing keynote of Relevant10… what is success? For the the text/audio of Part One of the Closing Keynote of Relevant10 If you’d rather listen, than read the Part 2, click on each link here below, and then...
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Why Blog? : Being an Upside Down Blogger (Part 1)
On Tuesday, November 02 nd, 2010Many of you asked if you could listen to an actual audio recording of the Closing Keynote of Relevant’10, “Blogging in the Upside Down Kingdom”? Ah, but I’m a blogger, just banging it out and often badly, and speaking makes my neck all blotchy and my knees knock crazy and wouldn’t you know, livestreaming apparently had a technical glitch that night...
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moreIn Defense of Food: and all who bring it to our tables
On Friday, October 29 th, 2010My Dad always knew that I wasn’t planning on coming back. Christmas, Thanksgiving, a weekend home to see him, the farm, but I had no intentions of coming back to the farm to live. I wasn’t planning on a life of gravel roads with lonely farmhouses holding down long lanes with a paint-flaking barn on every corner. WasnR...
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A Blogger’s Prayer
On Tuesday, October 26 th, 2010T o do things no one else is doing, we can’t do what everyone else is doing and our greatest triumphs in life are always our most solitary ones. : Every great victory begins on the knees. Upside Down blogging, with Jesus increasing and us decreasing, begins with us bowed in prayer over a keyboard… so we begin in prayer… A Blogger’s ...
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morewhen you wonder if what you create is any good
On Thursday, June 10 th, 2010He asks me if it’s perfect, twenty times he asks me it’s perfect. I laugh wonder at his work, ask if he really did all that and he nods and I say yes — it’s perfect! —- because that is what I see and outside the window — I can see them and I count — 13 golden finches, winged suns. They flit about the feeder. He keeps tracing the grain of the woode...
