Yet another post in which I borrow shamelessly from the Gretchen Rubin and Liz Craft podcast. You really, really, really should listen to it every single week. I don’t actually subscribe to it but just remember, “Oh, it’s Wednesday! Time for Gretch and Liz!”
Anyway, yesterday they were discussing the issue of how to deal with people who are very upset about your problems and so aren’t helpful. A woman had written in earlier saying that she had cancer, and her mother was so devastated about it that it was draining and upsetting for the daughter to be around her. Instead of her mother comforting her, she was having to comfort her mother. So the woman just didn’t want to be around a person who should have been a great help and support.
A terrible, terrible habit of mine. I’ll be all ready to get started on an actual task, something that needs to be done, and then I’ll say to myself, “But first let me check my e-mail. But first let me see what so-and-so is saying on that website I like. But first let me have a snack.” Whatever. Half an hour, forty-five minutes, an hour can go by. 
day after Thanksgiving, at a kitchen table that still has dirty dishes on it, facing counters still piled with debris. Jim and I will launch a commando raid and get everything cleaned up later on. It would have been nice to get up to a clean kitchen this morning, but our guests stayed and stayed. Isn’t that great? The surest sign of a successful party is that people don’t want to leave. So I’m reminding myself as I sit here of the wonderful time we had last night sitting around this very table (and the one in the dining room, too, which is also still cluttered). How fast special events go by! Which is only another way of saying, how fast life goes by! Everyone left and I looked at Smoggy, our cantankerous cat and said, “Smoggy, Thanksgiving is all over for another year!”
A short post today as I wrap up the week. I was thinking this morning about the phrase “knowledge puffs up while love builds up” in the New Testament book of I Corinthians. This particular verse comes from chapter 8, but the 13th, so-called “love chapter” continues on with the theme: “If I . . . can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge but do not have love, I am nothing.” (Both quotations are from the NIV translation.)
A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle, originally published in 1962, now available in a number of formats from many different outlets. Visit the author’s website at 
Are you familiar with the terms “maximizer” and “satisficer”? I notice that the spellcheck on my website platform has flagged both of those words as being misspelled, but since my hero Gretchen Rubin uses them they must be okay. (She’s not the only one who uses the words, but I believe I got them first from her.) i guess I should define those terms. So a “maximizer” keeps looking and looking for the perfect whatever-it-s, comparing and analyzing and second-guessing. (Some people actually enjoy this process; others are driven crazy by it but feel they have to keep going.)
The Bible is far more than just a storybook, a collection of moralistic tales. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t fascinating lessons to be learned, along with the vastly more important doctrinal issues.