Love and encouragement from an imperfect mom and her fun teen daughters. We welcome you to live life with us.
articles on making and keeping friends
To idealize another person, even God, is to actually hate the real person, while making unreasonable demands and never accepting the person or forgiving him or her. People idealize a person or God by believing the “idealized person” (or God) owes them and thus the idealizers create an image of a person (or God) who … Read more Idealizing not Loving People: from “loving” to hating a person—even God
We must recognize legalism and protect ourselves and others from its milder forms (forcing people to do what they do not need to do) and its dangerous forms (covering the sins of abusers, claiming they are doing God’s work). In its milder form, legalists mistake God for an angry boss and demand too much of … Read more Recognizing Legalism and its Hidden Dangers
People may complain life seems like an endless battle, yet this is not a complaint but the truth. Naïve people may also believe they don’t need to fight in this life. They will suffer for this false belief. We have a real enemy, the devil who hates us. If we pretend the battle does not … Read more Yes, You Can Win the Spiritual Battle if You Admit it is Real!
While there are good forms of pride, our sneaky flesh resists humbling itself before God and others. Our flesh is infested with self pride (“Look at wonderful me, not you,”) and zero God-pride (“Look at our wonderful God; let me love and serve you.”) We need to resist our pride yet not condemn ourselves, because … Read more The Sneaky Pride of Flesh
A friend of mine asked me to pray for her to re-discover her passion for God. She felt dry in her Christian walk, despite being a Christian for decades. Another friend, also a super strong Christian, told me this would be a great prayer for her. Both of these women attend church faithfully, read their … Read more I Don’t Feel Close to God: Veteran Christians not feeling that passion
I don’t know any other way to begin this post than to reaffirm this title, “You Matter!” Every woman and younger gal out there matters. But what happens when a gal is working so hard, she is taking care of everyone but herself? What if she has a family member (son or daughter, sibling, husband … Read more You Matter: God says so, and so do your loved ones!
Jealousy, our own and other people’s, can either protect a relationship (“healthy jealousy”), or it can damage relationships and hearts. In last week’s post, “True Guilt and False Shame,” I briefly mentioned jealousy, and I’d like to further address that quality. Jealousy can become a tool of Satan unless we recognize it and control it. … Read more Handling Jealousy, Ours and Other’s
Angry people’s words and lies can strike our souls and harm us if we begin to believe these lies. Even when we tell our logical side the words come from a liar or emotionally unstable person, we might not notice the bad impact those words have on our subjective heart. When an angry person blames … Read more When Angry People’s Words Strike Our Hearts
In my last post I talked about struggles gals have when they bury their emotions and no longer know what they are truly feeling. I introduced the idea of compulsions (some people call these addictions) that we use to block our emotions. Where do these compulsions (bad habits we are addicted to) come from? I … Read more Compulsions and Addictions: Where do They Come From?
On a radio broadcast, a young woman said she used to have no idea what she was feeling. She said many Millennials and other young people have lost touch with their feelings. One day when this woman’s husband asked her about her best and worst feeling moment of her day, the wife couldn’t answer. This … Read more What are You Feeling?