I’ve read that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master a skill. Maybe you’ve heard this too. Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know. What I do know is that practice certainly makes progress. I’ve witnessed this firsthand with my four daughters. Whether it’s in their weekly vocal training, or their almost daily …
“You can’t make me upset too,” my new husband, Ted, responded calmly. I was visibly upset with him and he refused to even engage me. Couldn’t he at least act like he resonated with my feelings? Instead, he seemed determined to remain unaffected and unmoved. That was almost 15 years ago. Since then, I’ve come …
I watched as a first-grade ballerina stood off to the side, shyly observing several of her classmates spin and giggle hand-in-hand. Even though she’d been in class with them all year long, she seemed hesitant to jump in without an invitation. My heart longed to remedy that—and, fortunately, I could. You see, one of those …
This post originally appeared as an exclusive article on Kirk Cameron’s The Campfire. Sign up here. Maybe you’ve heard of the Band-Aid lesson? I hadn’t … that is, until yesterday. Over fried rice, purple potato springs rolls, and the chopsticks antics of both my kids and my husband, a friend and I talked about kids …
“So, who’s always right in your marriage?” the host on my local Christian radio station asked one of her guests. The husband of three months quickly replied, “My wife.” “Smart man,” the host laughed in response. Maybe, like me, you too have heard someone point to this as an ingredient for marital bliss. Perhaps you’ve …
As parents, we can’t protect our daughters from ever encountering a mean girl. At some point, each of them will. What we can do, though, is help equip them to face mean girls well. ————- I met Stacy and Stephanie in the third grade. The three of us shared a seat on the school bus, …
A few years ago, my youngest daughter had an obsession. Thankfully, it wasn’t with her three older sisters’ Crayola markers. My couches were safe from rainbow-stained fingers. Rather, it was a preoccupation of the literary kind. In the span of 48 hours, she requested I read the book, Miss Rumphius, to her three or four …
During our first few years of marriage, Ted’s favorite late night companion was a political forum website. It was an online gathering place for the politically conservative to discuss the latest in politics. You see, prior to our union, this was Ted’s go-to, end-of-the-day, wind-down activity, one that he brought with him into our marriage. …
“Are you having twins?” he asked, innocently enough. Little did he know, he wasn’t the first person to ask me this particular question. And, eight months into my fourth full-term pregnancy, kindness was not my default response. “No,” I curtly replied. “Are you sure?” he questioned. We were at the Museum of Science and Industry …
“What’s your favorite subject in school?” our pediatrician asked my fourth-grade daughter during a recent check-up. She quickly answered, “I don’t like math.” Inwardly, I cringed at her response—and not simply because she’d replied to a positive question with a negative remark. You see, I knew she didn’t really dislike math. What she disliked was …
