Category Archives: My Thought Closet

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How to Calm Your Anxious Thoughts

“If you’re struggling with anxious thoughts, your Savior sees you.” That’s what my friend Suzie said, and I said, “Yes! Tell me more!”

And, she did. So, I invited her to coffee today because I want — need — to hear her encouragement and I know you do too. We can all let worry lead us to all the wrong places. So today, let’s put the worry behind us and the hope of Jesus before us – it will lead us to the peace we all need!

Pour your coffee, and I’ve saved you a seat, so pull up a chair. Lean back, relax — we’ll let Suzie Eller do the talking!

I wanted to make it all okay.

The problem is that it wasn’t okay.

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I was doing all that I knew to do, and it wasn’t working. We were fighting together as a family, yet there was no formula. There was no set pattern to success. There wasn’t an “I’m out of here” option, because it was someone we loved.

One morning I tried to pray, but I couldn’t sit still long enough. My legs matched my anxious thoughts as I paced the carpet.

Jesus, help me.

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How to Dream Big (Like a 6-Year-Old)

When my son Connor was six years old, he wrote a hilarious Christmas wish list.

I still remember his creativity and boldness in choosing the many, many, many, many items. I smile when I think back to the wintery day he asked to get out my laptop and type out his Christmas list for him. He stayed serious and thoughtful as he dictated each item.

How to Dream Big image

When I found it recently, I laughed out loud and thought you may get a kick out of it too.

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3 Habits of the Happy Woman

Forgetful. That’s me! The thing that drives me crazy about being forgetful is that I can’t remember what I forgot! How about you?

3 habits of the happy woman image

I forget my kids’ names. I forget phone numbers and appointments and birthdays. So, I write down all that important stuff (not my kids names, I really do know those) and then I forget where I put the paper. Girl, it’s bad sometimes!

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How I Almost Ruined My Marriage

I knew that would probably get your attention!

It was all about the laundry.

I’ll get right to it. My husband, Phil, has always been a great guy, but there was one big issue with his greatness. He was perfectly capable of dropping his dirty clothes in the hamper, which has always been placed conveniently in our closet. But did he ever do this simple thing that he was perfectly capable of doing? Nope. Most of the time, he dropped his dirty clothes right in front of the clothes hamper. Right in front.

At first, I tried to handle it with humor. I conducted a dirty clothes protocol seminar in our closet.

I invited him into the closet with me, where I used exaggerated gestures while standing varying distances from the hamper, all the while counting out loud how many seconds it took me to toss laundry into the basket rather than in front of it. Of course, I also pointed out that even though I cannot see, I rarely missed.

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Are You the Wrong Kind of Busy?

I had said yes one too many times and my life was too full for me to pull it off. I was forgetting appointments, neglecting my family and feeling like I was so busy that all I had time for was guilt.

Ever felt  like that?

Busy. It’s such a loaded word, isn’t it?

Some people think busy is a bad word! When a woman says she is  “way too busy,” it can be code for “I have no balance in my life and it is totally out of control!” Some women wear busy like a badge, as if her level of exhaustion and the number of things on her to-do list indicate her level of importance and her amount of significance.

Busy is relative. For one woman, busy may be a hair appointment on the same day she has to grocery shop. For another woman who starts her day at 6:00 AM and follows her first cup of coffee with six appointments, four phone calls, her part-time job, car-pooling the kids, and making dinner, the thought of being busy never even enters her mind! She still has time and energy to spare.

There’s not just one way to define busy. The definition of busy is as individual as each woman.

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3 Comforts When the Road Feels Long

When I am filled with cares, your comfort brings me joy. (Psalm 94:19 HCSB)

When I was a girl, every summer we visited my grandparents in northern Florida on the Apalachicola River. The closer we got to their house, the louder the cicadas sang and the thicker the humidity became. The sky was as black as the river that ran behind their house. On those sticky summer nights, to a little girl, it just seemed like there was only vast emptiness ahead of us.

In the vast darkness, our headlights seemed to be the only lights around. But, once we got close to Granddaddy’s house, we could see a tiny light blinking in the distance.

Granddaddy would always leave the porch light on and when we saw the porch light, we knew we were almost there.