Good morning! I love gathering videos for you all each week. Jack Carroll received the most votes last Saturday, but what about this week? Which of these is your favorite?
10May, 2013
I’ve a friend named Stacey (guy) who started dating a girl years ago. I asked him how he was feeling about it, whether he thought she was going to work out. He said he hadn’t thought much about it, that it wasn’t time yet. What do you mean, I asked. Of course you’ve thought about it. He admitted he had, but that he wasn’t going to evaluate the relationship for another month. Instead, he was just going to enjoy it. He actually showed me his calendar and the following month had an X on a specific date. He said he had given himself permission to wait a month, and after this specific date [...]
Growing up, I didn’t think my mother liked me. I knew she had to love me, she was my mother. But I wasn’t sure she liked me, or at least she didn’t know how to handle me. Mom was quiet and melancholy; I was brash and angry. Melancholy and anger were the mechanisms we each used to cope with the family’s dysfunction. But we had little in common. Well, except for the dysfunction.
But I did know my mother loved me. She said she worried about me, she wanted me to be happy; she wanted me to know Jesus. And she prayed for me every day. Every morning as I got ready for school, I passed the den and caught a glimpse of her reading her Bible and praying.
Maybe she wasn’t close to me, but I saw with whom she was [...]
08May, 2013
I think I’ve been in a hurry for almost seven years. In January of 2006, I found out I was pregnant with Henry. Later that week, I was offered a contract to write Cold Tangerines. And since then, it seems, I’ve been in a hurry, running against the clock. They say that being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life. I get that feeling.
I’ve been stacking things up, plan upon plan upon plan. I’ve been cramming things in—pushing, hustling, scurrying. I’ve been strategizing, multi-tasking, layering commitments one upon another like bricks.
It worked for a while. I like to be busy. I’ll always be kind of [...]
07May, 2013
I didn’t ever give much weight to phrase I have been spared until last Saturday morning when I had an undramatic/dramatic experience. Before the idea of being spared seemed like a theologically charged concept which condemned others. But on that morning I understood, for a moment, the freedom that being spared offers.
There was a pelting rain as an SUV, traveling from the opposite direction on the interstate, literally flew through the air, right by my window. It landed between my car and the one behind me, missing everyone, before it [...]
Not long ago I saw a tweet from a Christian leader saying something like “Watching the news feed. Lots of horrible things happening. Do we need more to prove the depravity of man?”
I get where the guy is coming from. It would be easy to watch the news and believe people are evil. But there are three immediate problems at play in the simple tweet [...]
Each week we bring you a sermon from an unlikely source. Musicians, scientists, actors, business leaders and this week a poet [...]
Last week, “pay it forward” won your vote. What about this week? Which of these is your favorite?
One of the unsaid promises of social media is: you can be famous. If you get enough followers, fans, likes, retweets, then you can make your book, blog, movie, band, idea – go. So we focus on making big enough tribes, creating big enough platforms, so our idea will fly. We delve into:
Twitter – Facebook – Instagram – Pinterest – YouTube – MySpace – LinkedIn – Jumbalaya – Vimeo – Google Plus – WordPress – OmniCron – Tumblr
We work hard on our personal brand.
Squeeze into [...]
02May, 2013
I grabbed a copy of Jon Acuff’s new book last week. It’s called Start and it’s about chasing your dreams and making things happen. It’s terrifically written and more than that, it’s super helpful. It’s also healthy, in a way, because psychologists have proven we are beings who need to be in motion to really be psychologically healthy. If you’ve not picked up a copy, make it one of your summer reads.
Anyway, one of the things Jon talks about is [...]
