I began the new year with great hope. A new day, a new year. New and unlimited possibilities! Change was coming, and I knew it. I felt excited.   But just a few weeks into 2010, I stopped feeling excited. Instead, I began to feel discouraged. And I’m not the only one. Several people I know have experienced a depression that set in as the month advanced. And that’s what I began to feel too—a melancholy pressure stifling hope and stealing the day-to-day joys of life.   Maybe it’s because there have been more clouds so far this year than sun. Maybe it’s the post-holiday winter blues that a lot...

Said Pastor Jordan today: When you don’t fix your eyes on yourself or your circumstances, but rather on Christ and who you are in Him, there are no limits on your life.   I loved that. A life without limits.   What a perfect way to look at 2010. My experiences from last year, my circumstances at the moment, my dreams and disappointments—none have the power to limit my life today. None can steal away the hope that lives in me, which is Christ Himself.   That is, as long as I don’t let them.   As I begin a new year, I’m thankful for the reminder to speak the truth of Christ over my...

I woke up on New Year’s Day to sunshine. That alone, and the fact that I didn’t have to go to work, made me wake up happy. Besides that, waking up to something called new is happy too.   While every day is a new day, one with no mistakes in it yet (as Anne of Green Gables says), there’s something different about the start of a new year. A bigger page is being turned. Another chapter, or even another book, of life is beginning. A larger chunk of the past is finished.   I think of each new year as unscripted, an opportunity to consider that things just might break outside the box of my present...

It’s the night before the last day of 2009. It’s raining outside, and I’m cold this evening, with a sore throat. Thank God I took tomorrow off—all I feel like doing is hiding under my electric blanket and staying there for a long, long time.   What a dreary ending to the year. Many people have far worse things to complain about; I have far better things to be thankful for. And I am. But sometimes all the disappointments and unfulfilled expectations of a year pile up in that week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, like a long headache. Feeling unwell—in body or spirit—can steal away one’s hope...

I freely confess it: Coming back to “normal life” after three weeks away has been difficult. More so than I anticipated.   For one, filling my days once again with the necessity of work has been challenging—having to squeeze the basics of living, from exercise to Christmas shopping to cleaning, into evenings and weekends.   For another, my life here at home is so much busier than the simplicity of life in my hometown. Church events, parties, tea with friends and holiday activities mark almost every day on my calendar. I’ve found myself stressed by busyness, upset by unmet expectations and...

Nashville your green and yellow hills won my heart from the very beginning   your tree-lined fence-lined two-lane roads and Southern pillars and porches   became home away from home   now your rock-faced shoulders are mine, with their summer vines, slick surfaces after a rain and icicles in winter   your blue skies and orange sunsets are copies of the ones in my favorite childhood nursery rhyme book   Nashville city-town of dreams and dreamerswho believe in miracles and magic when they arrive with sweet expectations and leave with something different and more   as I will...