Live life ✔, Write ✔

I would like to apologize in advance, again, but it’s still the end fringes of the holiday season and therefore the B usi EST time of the year, and I am keeping these newsletters short and sweet until I have survived fully enjoyed it. That said, New Year's always hits me hard in the feels.   Not the same feels as Christmas, birthday, and Easter feels, but it gets me all the same.  And, while it is the overarching implications of the marked passage of time that carry the most weight, the thing that stirs my emotions more than the date itself is the theme song that accompanies it, and the message it conveys. As we of the human race (or at least the Gregorian calendar following people) collectively reflect on the miracle that we survived another lap around the sun - some of us without loved ones who didn’t, some of us with new life we added over the year, but all of us changed in some way by the experiences the last 12 months brought - those famous notes ring out and I ge...

We’re only a few days away now, and that means that Christmas festivities are well underway in this house.   The decorations are up, the baking is in full swing, and even the (spoiled) dog’s gifts are wrapped and ready for the big day.   There are always SO many things that we try to fit into the holiday season, and that means that I am continually covered in flour, drained of creativity, and have very little (in reality NO) time to write this time of the year.  So this newsletter is going to be light on invention and words, but hopefully interesting enough based on its content; pickles and almonds. What do pickles and almonds have in common?  In this house, the answer is “Christmas Tradition.” By now you’ve probably picked up on the fact that we have a lot of family traditions.  A great many of them happen during the holidays, as one would expect.  I’m going to share two of those with you today.   The tradition of the hidden Christmas p...

That might sound like an odd title, but you all know I’m going to explain it with a story. The year was 2008.  Our little family of four was renting an old house in a tiny little town in central Ohio.   When I say “old house” I mean that the main part was built in 1850, and the foot-thick wooden floor beams that could be seen from the rough hole that was the basement were so old that I half expected them to be petrified.  The floor of that original section slanted heavily downward to the north.  I would lay our baby on the carpet in the living room, and she’d roll her way into the computer nook every time because downhill travel was easier.   The newer sections, which were the result of various subsequent additions over 150 years or so, didn’t quite line up with the original.  As a result, there were odd 6”-12” steps between many of the areas.  The rooms themselves were smashed together in a strange format that made no logical sense and were const...

This is not what I originally had planned for this week’s newsletter.  I had figured that every other post you will see this month is going to be about Thanksgiving, and the things we’re/you’re thankful for, so I was going to just pass on that topic and write about a tablecloth instead (spoiler alert: that one is coming sometime down the road) but I had a last-minute change of mind (or heart). “In all things give thanks…” (1 Thess. 5:8) Thankfulness and gratitude are mentioned an awful lot in scripture.  I would hazard a guess that behind love (“for God is love” ~ 1 John 4:6), and alongside humility, giving thanks is among the leading topics spanning the 66 books of the Bible. At the risk of appearing cliche, I still like to make a habit of devoting November to a focus on gratitude.  Yes, I do think that we should be grateful all year round.  No, I don’t do it just because everyone else does.  Yes, I do think it makes a positive difference.   I am conv...