Family – Page 19 – FindYourBuriedTreasure

Remember the giving as well as the thanks

I’m doing Thanksgiving a little differently this year. That doesn’t mean I’ll be making any changes to the traditional meal, or abandoning time-honored practices and customs that go along with the day. And it certainly doesn’t mean I won’t be thinking, talking, or writing about all of the people and things I am grateful for. What it means is that before I focus on the “thanks” part of Thanksgiving this year, I’m going to concentrate on the “giving” part. I want to spend time reflecting [...]

By bettyliedtke|November 28th, 2013|Columns, Family, Holidays, Values|Comments Off

A shining star, a passing friend

A childhood friend of mine passed away last week. He lived in the house across the street from us, in a small town where everybody knew everybody else, and most of your relatives lived nearby. My grandma and grandpa lived two doors up from his house, and his grandparents lived two doors up from mine. Our parents knew each other long before either of us was born, and are still good friends today. He was the oldest of three brothers, and I was the second [...]

By bettyliedtke|September 27th, 2013|Columns, Family|Comments Off

Counting the moves, and counting the years

My daughter called the other day. In addition to the things we normally talk about on the phone, she asked if I remembered how old she was when we first moved from the Chicago area – where my husband and I grew up and where both of our kids were born – to Roanoke, Virginia, the first of several moves that eventually landed our family in Minnesota. I couldn’t answer off the top of my head, so I had to stop and do some mental [...]

By bettyliedtke|September 20th, 2013|Columns, Family, Travel|Comments Off

Learning and relearning fills the time in Uganda

Some of the things I learned during this trip to Uganda: How to say “How are you?” “I’m fine,” and “Thank you” in Luo, the language of the Acholi tribe in Northern Uganda; What crocodile meat tastes like (better than boiled goat, in my opinion, but not as good as an ostrich burger); That wading in the Nile River is both humbling and refreshing; That a puppet waving from a bus window can make even stoic police and armed guards smile. Some of the things [...]

By bettyliedtke|August 9th, 2013|Columns, Faith, Family, Travel, Uganda|Comments Off

A Lesson in Leadership

Tabitha and I have already spent some time at the Cornerstone Leadership Academy--both the Boys' school and the Girls' school, where I did a program about finding the treasure in our gifts from God. We've been asked to develop leadership programs and presentations for other groups, so we've been working on those, too. The other night, I got a lesson and some insights into leadership in a rather unusual way. Tabitha and her husband Stone invited me for a visit in the home where they've [...]

By bettyliedtke|July 18th, 2013|Faith, Family, Uganda, Uncategorized|Comments Off

Back home to Uganda

I remember well arriving in Entebbe during my first trip to Uganda. Standing in the airport parking lot while our bags were being loaded in the van, I kept looking up at the sky and the scenery all around me, and thinking, "I'm in Africa! I'm in Africa!" It's now two trips later in just under two years, and I find myself taking it all in and enjoying the familiarity. I was welcomed as warmly as Tabitha was by her family who picked us up [...]

By bettyliedtke|July 14th, 2013|Family, Travel, Uganda, Uncategorized|Comments Off

To Get the Best Start, Start Writing the End

“Write the ending.” That was the point I took away from a blog post I read recently, by a writer whose work I greatly admire. And it’s the type of advice I especially love – simple to understand, easy to do, and it helps me not only in my writing but in other work I’m doing, and in my life in general. In this particular post, the writer said she had just written the ending of the novel she’s been working on. She pointed out [...]

By bettyliedtke|February 15th, 2013|Columns, Family, Writing|Comments Off

Warm thoughts come from a cold encounter

“I can see I’m at the right house,” the man said when I answered the doorbell wearing a winter jacket and scarf. Our furnace went out last week, on the day the temperature was expected to get down to fifteen below zero. The good news is that a repairman was able to come over fairly quickly, and he spotted the problem immediately. The bad news is that fixing it required a part he didn’t have, and couldn’t locate anywhere in the area. It had to [...]

By bettyliedtke|January 31st, 2013|Columns, Family|Comments Off

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 or significantly alter our holiday [...]

By bettyliedtke|January 11th, 2013|Columns, Family, Health and Well-being, Holidays, Professional Speaking|Comments Off

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 to talk about what a [...]

By bettyliedtke|December 7th, 2012|Columns, Family, Holidays, Values|3 Comments

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