Real Life is Better Than Fiction

Intentional Intentional is one of those ideas that we have to… well… be intentional about. We have to think about something and do it on purpose. Most of our lives are made up of instinct or habit. The good news is that we can make "intentional" a habit. It just takes a little practice. I once read somewhere that to develop a habit we need to do something for 21 days straight. Sometimes I think it takes longer than that. It certainly takes much less time to ruin what we are trying to do. One of the times in my life that I recall being intentional was when I saw this boy I thought was cute. I didn't exactly throw myself at him or do anything wrong, but if my mom had seen my actions, I'm pretty sure she would not have been happy with me. But whether my actions were right, wrong, or somewhere in the middle, they were intentional and they worked. I caught that boy's attention and have kept it now for 33 years. If being "intentional" is ...

Bible There have long been debates over which version of the Bible is "correct." I grew up with KJV, the church I now attend uses KJV, but I have also long used the NIV. When I'm studying a passage I will read several different versions to get a better understanding. Sometimes a different word is used and it gives me more clarity. Yes, there are good versions and some definite bad ones. The writer in me looked at the original NIV as being in language that's easier to read for many people. Some argued the NIV had so many fewer words than the KJV, my writer brain also saw with KJV's "Jesus saith unto them" as the wordier form of the NIV's "Jesus said." While working on a project not too long ago, I was copying and pasting a plethora of versus off-line to help me save some time. However, as I read back through the project, many of the verses didn't look right. I pulled out my old, falling apart NIV and looked up each vers...

Rest As I write this, my husband and I are away from home for the weekend celebrating our anniversary. The past year has been an extremely stressful year for us. A lot happened that was out of our control. The couple of months leading up to our anniversary were even more stressful, and we felt Satan attacking us in huge ways on a daily basis. Knowing it was Satan helped ease our minds a little bit, but it didn't really help our hearts. We were physically and mentally exhausted. We needed a time of rest. Beyond renting a cabin, we made no plans. We needed a break. We needed to rest. I asked friends to pray for this time away. You see, when my husband and I go away, disaster seems to follow. I joking-not-joking asked a few of my friends to pray – specifically for no falling trees, no car problems, no one jumping/falling/being pushed off balconies, no police banging on her door in the middle of the night, no major parental health issues that would make us cut our trip sh...

Please welcome my fellow author, Kellyn Roth. She has a new book out and I think it's one you will thoroughly enjoy! About the Book  Click the cover to go to Amazon and grab your copy! Adele has been lost for a long time now ... Adele Collier has sought a carefree lifestyle ever since her tragic childhood. Determined to never allow anyone or anything to control her life or emotions again, she consistently seeks distraction in gaiety. But shaking her ghosts isn’t as easy as she’d like. Troy Kee has been alone in the world since the Great War took his parents and left him in care of his younger sister. When she marries, he’s left to seek after his goal of a healthy, complete family. But how can he focus on his dream when trouble plagues his family vineyard? When Adele and Troy meet, a whirlwind romance begins—but can two lost souls have a healthy relationship? About the Author Kellyn Roth is a Christian; historical author from North-Eastern Oregon. Kell is a ran...

Knowledge Some people love learning. Some people make a career out of it. If we are wise, we should be learning new things every day. I enjoy learning how to do new things; if it's home repairs or craft projects, I feel good in the end being able to stand back and see the fruits of my labor. I love reading and history. I enjoy combining the two even more – reading about history. The funny thing about knowledge is that some people have a wealth of it, yet don't have any wisdom. What's the difference, you may ask? Knowledge is a knowing; wisdom is putting what we know to good use. As we were raising our children, we gave them as much knowledge as we could. That's where our responsibility stopped. It's what they did with that knowledge that actually made a difference and turned knowledge into actual wisdom. Sometimes we hated to watch them go through things, but those were lessons they each had to learn for themselves. I imagine God often feels th...

Brave Putting on a brave face. Now there's something I'm good at. I have a habit of not asking people to pray for me in difficult times. Why? Shouldn't I crave the knowledge that close friends are interceding to God on my behalf? Sure. But then there's the friends who remember and ask me how I'm doing. That's the bad part for me. I can put on a brave face until someone speaks to me. That's when I fall apart and become a hot mess. A little over a year ago I asked friends to pray for a situation I was facing. I happened to see one of those friends a couple of hours later and she had the gall to ask me how I was doing. I couldn't say a word, only cry. The next day I purposely avoided another one of those friends, but she caught up with me anyway. She teasingly said, "Am I not good enough for you today?" Yep, you guessed it. Hot mess right there in front of dozens of people. At another time another situation came up, and I again a...

Miracles Some people don't believe miracles still happen today, but I believe they do. All you have to do is look to see them. Miracles happen every single day. You can see it in nature, in the birth of the child, and God's healing hand. Recently some friends of ours had a very sick baby. The doctors had given her a 15% chance of survival through the night. Each day she woke up after that was a miracle. It was a testament to all the people who were praying on her behalf. It's almost as if you don't believe in miracles, what's the point of praying? When we pray, oftentimes we ask God to do the unbelievable, something we puny humans can't do on our own. We want God to do big things, but do we believe that He can? That e will? The Bible is full of miracles in both the old and the New Testament. God parted the Red Sea so the Israelites could walk across on dry ground. He made a donkey speak. He made barren women mothers. The New Testament is full of ...