• humility
    humble,  humility

    Humility: The Six Hidden Joys

    Humility is a hard sell these days. Actually, it’s never been on anyone’s top ten list of fun character traits to develop. But pride is the enemy of all happiness, I believe. By pride, I don’t mean self-esteem. The confusing of the two to the detriment of both is a popular topic for women’s faith blogs, but holding oneself as precious in the eyes of the Lord is necessary to holding other people precious as well. Pride, unlike self-esteem, has a chilly heart. The problem with pride is that it needs to be constantly sustained at the expense of others. The art of comparing ourselves with others assumes that we…

  • Featured

    Five Signs that Reconciliation is Impossible

    Reconciliation is a world of its own apart from forgiveness. So I hesitated when someone recently asked me, “How long do I need to keep forgiving?” Because I realized the real question was about reconciliation, I didn’t respond with the standard seventy times seven answer.  I suppose we don’t really ever stop forgiving, but knowing when to end futile attempts at reconciliation can be important, even life-saving. I used to be a champion reconciler. What that really means is that I went through the motions of apology and apology acceptance as if they meant something. Sometimes they did. Sometimes they didn’t. I figured that if someone apologized to me, I…

  • Truth
    Telling the Truth,  Truthfulness

    How to Tell the Truth in Love (Even to Yourself)

    For someone who believes that Jesus is the Truth, I have sure spent a lot of my life trying to save people from the truth. Even from my childhood, I have tried to protect others from what I thought would hurt them, namely the truth about how I felt or the truth of their situations. I have a Ph.D. in tiptoeing around uncomfortable issues and if I am honest with myself, it wasn’t just to protect them, but myself from the horrors of personal conflict. Numerous reasons exist as to why I have struggled with this particular issue. Firstly, I am sensitive. You know the empath on Star Trek? The…