When God called Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, no one was more surprised than Moses. He thought the Lord must surely have the wrong man. He tried to convince God that he was not qualified and that he needed to pick someone else for the job. You can read Moses story in Exodus 3 and 4.

Have you ever felt stuck? It’s not a good feeling. You feel like you can’t move on from where you are right now. Writers get that feeling often staring at the blank page. I think we all feel that from time to time we would like to just get out of our present circumstances and do something new and different.

Do you talk a lot? People usual say that I’m quiet. One particular lady in my church loves to tell a story about when I was a little girl, and she couldn’t get me to talk to her. I was very shy when I was little. I laughingly tell people that once I started talking, I didn’t stop.

When I was thinking about what to blog about this week, I looked up and saw a sign on my desk that my daughter made for me several years ago. It has three simple but powerful words on it. Those words are hope, pray, love.

Have you been asked yet, “How’s the new year treating you?” I have an even better question for you. How are you treating yourself in the new year? Sometimes we can be very hard on ourselves. We know all our own weakness and faults and tend to see them all at once when we mess up. We know ourselves so well that we have a hard time showing ourselves the same mercy that we would someone else. Here is an excerpt from my book, 101 Life Lessons From Uno (The One-Legged Duck), that will encourage us to be kind to ourselves.

I want to start my first blog of this year by thanking my faithful readers. I know you read and don’t always leave a comment. I do that too on some of the blogs that I read. That’s fine, but I would always like to hear from you. It blows my mind to think that I have been blogging for about a year and a half now. When I started, I intended that for the blog to be a mixture of devotionals, writing related and whatever else that I thought would be beneficial or fun to focus on. It seems that lately, it has been more devotional.

Christmas is over. It went as quickly as it came. All the presents that you had to find a few minutes here and there to wrap were unwrapped in what seemed like seconds. So now what? What do you do with the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day? How about the three R’s?

Are you still rushing around doing last minute things for Christmas? I knew this was a busy time and you didn’t have time to read a lengthy blog and to be honest I didn’t have time to write one. So, I wrote a poem instead. I hope that when you need a break from the hectic pace, you will take a couple of minutes, read this poem and focus on “The Gift.” Merry Christmas!

We complain a lot, especially around Christmas time, about the quality of things we buy. Merchandise doesn’t seem to be as sturdy or made with as good of materials as it used to be. We talk about how easily things are broken or fall apart on their own. Even if we do find something that is well made, we know that it will eventually wear out.E

Much of what we experience in Christmas is what we hear. We hear the hustle and bustle of shoppers. We hear the sounds of traffic. We hear the cash register scanners as we pay for purchases. We hear the rustle of paper as we wrap presents. We may even hear ourselves getting snippy with our family and friends as we try to get everything done.

For as long as I can remember an angel has topped my Christmas tree. When I was a child, it was an inexpensive paper angel with a silk dress and blond strands of hair. Now my angel has a bit more sophistication, but she has a habit of leaning one way or the other.

There is a phrase in a Don Moen song that I think we need to adapt this Thanksgiving. The phrase is “Give thanks with a grateful heart.” Most of us have been raised to say thank you for compliments, kind deeds, and gifts but often it is just lip service. Gratitude needs to become a heart thing.

When we talk about faith, much of the time we talk about the kind of faith that causes us to step out of the boat of our comfort zone into a new adventure. If we have a problem too big for us to handle, mountain moving faith is another favorite topic. When we are confronted with something that is insurmountable to us, we know that God can do the impossible. But, what about the kind of faith that calls us to wait upon the Lord?