Love and loss were intertwined this Christmas
My brother-in-law passed away on December 23. He had been very sick for quite a while, and as Christmas approached, we learned that he wasn’t expected to live much longer. That doesn’t make it any easier to accept or to live with when it happens, especially when it’s around the holidays. “I was hoping so much that he’d be able to hang on till Christmas,” my sister sobbed when she called us from the hospital. We were prepared to drop [...]
Igniting a dream through Fire of Hope
Although I often write about what’s going on in my life and the various activities in which I’m involved, I try not to do too much self-promotion in my column. Today I’m doing a little of both, however. I hope you won’t mind. I’m going to be speaking at an event at the State Theatre in Minneapolis on January 18 and 19, called Fire of Hope. It’s being promoted as a “Girlfriends’ Getaway for God,” although men are welcome to [...]
Success in the New Year will come 15 minutes at a time
My New Year’s Resolution is going to take exactly 15 minutes to complete. The catch is that it’s going to take 15 minutes on each and every day in 2013. I’m taking the 15-minute number from an organizing and decluttering expert who calls herself FlyLady, and who insists that you can do anything for 15 minutes. And she’s right. No matter how busy you are, how many projects or activities you’re juggling, or how exhausted you may be by the [...]
Corrections for Christmas songs and symbols
The StarTribune published an article last week about Christmas music. The point of the article was that most people today are annoyed with how early, how often, and how much they are assaulted with the sound of holiday music in stores, on the radio, and pretty much everywhere they go throughout the months of November and December. What caught my eye and captured my attention most, however, was a little fine-print detail you almost had to read between the lines [...]
A foggy morning clears the air
It was extremely and unseasonably foggy last Sunday morning – the kind of fog that feels surreal if you’re out driving in it because at times it is so thick that you can’t see anything around you. Even the deacon who delivered the sermon at Mass commented on it, noting that he had to be extra careful while driving to church from his home that morning. “What it really did,” he said, “was make me slow down.” He went on [...]