by Beth Lueders | Jul 12, 2019 | Blog Post, Perspective
Fear has a way of bulldozing its way into our lives. Uninvited. Unwilling to leave. Fear keeps us sidelined and imprisoned in puny thinking. Author Max Lucado shares the following poignant thoughts on the pervasiveness of fear and how courage and faith counter our...
by Beth Lueders | Jul 6, 2019 | Blog Post, Everyday People, Perspective
by guest columnist Nancy Parker Brummett Love is worth the risk when volunteering with older adults and getting to know and love them. Love is worth the risk even when the chances are pretty high you will also have to say goodbye to older friends in this earthly life...
by Beth Lueders | Jun 28, 2019 | Blog Post, Everyday People, Perspective
Some days you just need someone to knock you out of your doldrums or toss away your pity party invitations for you. My friend Doug Leader is one of those friends. The other day Doug handed me a picture of flowers and bugs that he carefully colored in with this...
by Beth Lueders | Jun 21, 2019 | Blog Post, Perspective
Waiting. Rats. Sigh. I have never met a person who enjoys waiting. Delays. Slowdowns. Interruptions. Postponements. Sure it does not help that our culture is hastily driven by instant gratification and instant results. Instant is a promised expectation in our world...
by Beth Lueders | Jun 15, 2019 | Blog Post, Perspective
Loose ends. We all encounter them. Some of us are good at wrapping up loose ends and moving on. Others of us tend to leave loose ends dangling here and there. I’m realizing that with work and some everyday responsibilities, I can be a wrapper upper with the best of...
by Beth Lueders | May 23, 2019 | Blog Post, Everyday People
Last month I wrote about how we can get stuck in life with the same ol’ routines. The same foods, the same drive to work, the same debate with a spouse, the same TV shows, the same thought patterns. To boost us out of a rut, I introduced you to Wendy, the...
by Beth Lueders | May 16, 2019 | Blog Post, Everyday People, Personal Change
Invaluable life lessons come to us from a myriad of sources. Even from unexpected places like a state correctional facility and an inmate sentenced to life without parole. For the past four years I have been communicating with a “lifer” prisoner via occasional phone...
by Beth Lueders | May 10, 2019 | Blog Post, Everyday People, Perspective
If you do an online search for “Mother’s Day gifts,” you’ll find at least 459,000,000 (459 million!) different gift ideas for dear Mom from chocolate-drizzled strawberries and fresh floral arrangements to crossbody bags and spa gift cards. But instead of sharing the...
by Beth Lueders | May 2, 2019 | Blog Post, Everyday People
Tap. Rap-tap. Tap. For the past several weeks I’ve heard the slight knock at my front door around 7:40 every weekday morning. My 11-year-old neighbor five houses up stops by now to greet Posie, my new collie girl who was a littermate to my Ayrabelle. Bit by bit, I am...
by Beth Lueders | Apr 25, 2019 | Blog Post, Perspective
Some words are worth remembering. America boasts some of the best two-word combos on the planet. Mashed potatoes. Fried chicken. Amazon Prime. Apple Inc. Walt Disney. In chapter one of my Two Days Longer book, I tell of an elderly widowed farmwife who quizzes me on...
