It Is Good for Me

This is my comfort in my trouble,
     that your promise gives me life…
It is good for me that I have been afflicted,
     that I might learn your statutes.
                          Psalm 119:50, 71
Today was a very heavy day for me, following several, consecutive, emotionally difficult days.
While waiting in line to pick up my son and daughter from school [...]

Read Full Post »

Prayer for the World

This week’s prayer focus is up at Kouya Chronicle. The focus is French-speaking Africa.
Technorati Tags: prayer for the world

Read Full Post »

More Energy

I’m always looking for ways to address burnout and increase my energy. A lot of the advice I read doesn’t seem to be very efficacious.  This site, however, was different. Way more honest–the author is definitively saying something that DOESN’T work: Pokemon cards.
She knows. Her kids sneaked a set of banned cards into the house and she [...]

Read Full Post »

Frog and Toad, Improved

I should have called this post, “Frog and Toad, Improved and Wherever Else That Train of Thought Leads Me”. Because, I’ll warn you ahead of time, I do some stream of consciousness rambling as one topic leads to another:
I didn’t think Frog and Toad could get any better. When I read those books, there is some [...]

Read Full Post »

"Code Switching"

Certain words and phrases fascinate me and send me off on a thinking trip that lasts all day long. The above phrase did it for me today. This phrase was waiting for me in my Feedblitz email update with a post from Think Christian.
I linked over to the original post being referred to and enjoyed reading Toddled [...]

Read Full Post »

Pain and Relief

From The Gift of Pain, by Paul Brand, M.D.:
[P]ain is not the enemy, but the loyal scout announcing the enemy. And yet–here is the central paradox of my life–after spending a lifetime among people who destroy themselves for lack of pain, I still find it difficult to communicate an appreciation for pain to people who [...]

Read Full Post »

Is Better Always Better?

Ever since reading the book better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande, M.D., I have been asking myself the question expressed in the title of this post.
On the one hand, I am deeply  moved by the stories in the book where people (mainly in the medical field) refused to settle for the status [...]

Read Full Post »

I Pray for the World series updates

The most recent prayer is for Madagascar and has been posted at Kouya Chronicle.
Last week’s post, which I missed linking to at the time, is here.
Lingamish has a really neat Flickr sidebar for the I pray for the world series. I, however, cannot figure out how to do this yet.
And, finally, there is now a [...]

Read Full Post »

Trauma related guilt

I am wandering my way through a helpful book called The Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Sourcebook. The following, admittedly rather cerebral, exercise was such a nice, concise way to think through some traumatic situations I have been through.
It is hard sometimes to make sense of a confusing situation. Some painful situations (such as abuse) are meant, [...]

Read Full Post »

Better

That’s the title of a a book I  just finished reading. It was an easy-to-read book which left me satisfied but also unsettled. Unsettled in a good way–asking questions, continuing to ponder what I read and its relevance to my own life.
There were several paragraphs in the introduction which seemed like they could be talking [...]

Read Full Post »