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Honey is Liquid Gold to Sweeten the Soul
My mouth longed for the first taste of this year’s honey harvest as I watched the golden syrup flow forth from our extractor. Even after the swarm in early June, the bees in our four hives have been quite productive. We collected 28 pints and nearly 4 quarts from only 1 hive over the weekend.…
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A Light to Shine
Everyone carries within them a light to shine, a melody to sing, or a gift to bestow upon the world. Everyone. Whether we recognize it or not, each human being bears God-given abilities unique just to them. Think for a moment. What if all those talents developed with the goal of promoting good? Could anyone…
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The Great Reset
Humans as well as most living beings tend to resist change. Why alter direction if life is running smoothly? There’s no point. Right? Instead of evaluating whether our existence could be better, inertia keeps us stuck in the same old patterns. Comfort trumps transformation. Until something moves us out of our familiar spaces, we shrug…
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Through Loving Deeply We Become Real
As a young girl, I learned what it meant to become real. When I was only 5 years old, I remember going to visit my great, great grandmother, Anna Peterson. She had just turned 103 and many family members gathered to celebrate her birthday at my great Aunt Mena and Uncle Augie’s home in Marion,…
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Can We Learn to Live with Risk?
The level of anxiety in my world is exhausting. I love my work, but this is hard. Trying to be a light in desperate times takes a fortitude I’m not sure I possess. Yet, this is the reason I started the ‘Coeurageous’ blog, long before Covid 19. The raised sense of anxiety started on 9/11,…
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Abundance: A Bountiful Harvest
About this time each year, I deal with a delicious dilemma. Any gardener of vegetables understands. Near the end of summer, at least one variety explodes in productivity. Usually it’s the zucchini doubling in size overnight (really!). For me, 2020 is the year of the cucumber, loads and loads of cucumbers. How do I handle…
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Choose to ‘Be the Good’ Anyway
On a wall in my sister’s living room hangs a plaque. It reads: Believe there is good in the world. Be the Good. This mantra embodies her life’s message. We may not recognize the good in the world, but we can always choose to be the good anyway. As many of you know, my sister…
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Chicken Little Is the Sky Really Falling?
If you’re familiar with chickens, you know they are flighty birds. Even a small sound sends them into a tizzy. When the rooster calls out a warning, all the hens nearly fall over one another running back into the coop. I’m sure this instinctive behavior developed to preserve the species. However, when taken to an…
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Purpose Within the Pain
I spend quite a lot of time trying to avoid trouble. I think the majority of us do the same. It’s self preservation. Maybe if I say and do all the right things then life will go along smoothly. I’ll somehow avoid all the problems I see others experiencing. However, this isn’t reality. Pardon me…
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Free to Flourish At Last
I spent the early part of the morning pulling weeds in my flower beds. This mindless activity offered my brain some time to think … to process the events of the past eighteen months. Yesterday my sister took her last breath after a long, painful battle with cancer. It’s an understatement to say that the…
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The Flag Still Flies
It’s a lazy Indiana afternoon. As I sit on my front porch, the flag flutters gently in the breeze while my cat dozes nearby. This week-end we’ll celebrate Independence Day all across America with cook-outs and fireworks. Although the debate over whether to stand or kneel for our national anthem remains unresolved, here at our…
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Lift Up Your Eyes to A Heavenly Vista
I was born and raised in the Midwest. We have a few hills in southern Indiana though the area where I live is primarily flat. So when I traveled this last week to visit my new grandson in eastern Tennessee, my legs weren’t used to the terrain. We seemed to climb up or down everywhere…
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A Message of Hope and Light
Life is all about perspective. The lens through which I see the world determines my focus. If I limit my vision to only human viewpoints then I open myself up to despair. Earthly messages leave me feeling depressed and overwhelmed. But heavenly heralds point to a deeper reality. Beneath this present darkness flows a message…
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Let us Pray
Earlier this week, a very special person decided to make a grand entrance into the world. Rather than holding off until mid July when he was due to show up, he chose to crash his own party. Needless to say, the baby shower ended abruptly when his mama’s water broke. Under normal circumstances, family would…
