"But, but, but" is a common phrase in my world these days, with a rambunctious four-year-old who has her own ideas about things and how she wants to do them. She rummages through the utensil drawer and makes off with the pizza cutter for … Read more

It was time to replace my old, clunky, hard-to-open storm door. After the somewhat painful process of researching, selecting, and ordering a new door, installation day finally arrived! The installer was scheduled to arrive in the early … Read more

Has it ever happened to you that you thought of something, perhaps something in your past, and that made you think of something else, and then something else came to mind? That happened to me a while ago, when I was told that a … Read more

It happened two days in a row: three different messages from God. Do you, like me, sometimes wonder how God lets us know what He wants for us? I'm a practical person, not given to flights of fancy or emotion. I'm more likely to read for … Read more

I've been missing many things during the pandemic, but nothing compares with the missing elements in worship. Yes, there have been alternatives to traditional worship such as services on Zoom and YouTube and drive-in church and physical … Read more

While my husband went to university, I ran a hostel for teenage runaways in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Kids from every small town came to the city for what they thought would surely be fun times and adventure, only to wind up beaten, lost, … Read more

When my husband John was still here, we used to go on short-term mission trips. These trips were four to six weeks long. We were very aware that we could not accomplish a lot in that short time period, but our prayer was that the group … Read more

Jewels can sometimes be found among the junk. My wife calls it "junking", and she does it quite often. When possible, I usually tag along. We don't actually visit junkyards or stores, but we call what we do junking because we do it among … Read more

Periodically, when my grandmother was baking a cake or a pie, I got to help her with the enjoyable but tedious task of cracking nuts. Each nut required a different amount of hammer force to crack or break the shell without ruining its … Read more

Do you like surprises? I posed this question recently in a not-very-significant survey (I asked only three people). I received two responses in the positive and one in the negative. Even the two positive responses were later qualified … Read more