I started to write this blog post thinking it would be a guide to surviving Christmas as singles. So many of us – not just singles – think of the holidays from the perspective of just getting through them. I don’t know exactly what it is about the holidays, but they seem to create unrealistic …
How Jesus Defeated the Grinch
The signs that Christmas is coming soon are all around us now. Christmas music follows us everywhere we go, decorations line the streets and cover homes and lawns, people are scurrying around in stores agonizing over what gifts to buy, and the mail carrier is getting later every day as the volume of Christmas mail …
A Place to Belong
A number of years ago I attended a women’s retreat where a former missionary was the speaker. She and her husband had raised their children during the years they had served in missions, thousands of miles from the homes of their grandparents and other relatives. She had worried they would grow up without a sense …
What Are Your Top Three?
It’s that time of year again in the United States when many gather around Thanksgiving Day dinner tables laden with food and surrounded by relatives and friends. But many also don’t. You know who you are. Your parents may be gone, siblings celebrating with in-laws, and friends with their own families. Or perhaps your spouse …
Lonely in Church?
I grew up in a small church, the daughter of a pastor who had a shepherd’s heart and a wife with the gift of hospitality. My parents invested deeply in the lives of many people and our home was a place where others in the church were free to come and go. Our church family …
The Truth About Our Worth
Years ago my young nephew came to visit for several days with his suitcase in tow. As soon as he arrived he opened it and pulled out his most prized possession at the time — his sling shot! He told me all about his plans to shoot shoot starlings, black birds, and sparrows, the only …
What About Me, God? Bless me, too!
Have you ever looked at others’ lives and wondered why they have the blessings they do, when you don’t? I sure have! It’s a human trait that goes way back — all the way to Adam and Eve. The temptation that convinced Eve to eat from the tree God had forbidden them to eat from was …
I Love My Freedom, But Now What?
In the survey I conducted before relaunching Purposeful Singleness, the vast majority of you indicated the aspect you like most about being single is your freedom. I would concur with that. The independence, the ability to be flexible and spontaneous, to not have to fit into a spouse’s agenda, are certainly wonderful perks to being …
The Ultimate Secret of Contentment
Our natural state as earthly beings is not contentment. We are always desiring more and better of anything and everything. If we are single we desire marriage; if we are married we desire our spouse to be more this, or better at that. Discontentment is not just limited to marital status, of course. It can …
Finding Peace When We Don’t Understand
I am analytical by nature. When it comes to figuring out how something works so I can use it, or getting to the root of a problem so I can move forward, that characteristic serves me well. But when it comes to finding answers to questions which have no complete answers, it costs me way …
Not Loving Your Life? Don’t Ditch Facebook!
I love Facebook. Most of the time, anyway. Here’s why. In my 50 plus years of life I’ve lived and worked in numerous locations. My “tribe” is scattered all over the globe. Gone are the days when the majority of people a person knows is in one location. As a result, we lose contact with …
Removing the Hindrances from Singleness
Many view singleness as a limitation rather than an advantage. I’d say it’s a fairly common perspective among Christians and non-Christians alike. It’s funny how we collectively forget that Jesus was single, and certainly nothing held Him back. And we forget that the second most prominent character of the New Testament was also single, the …
