Stacy Sanchez never thought her golden years would be spent this way. She and her husband had plans—a quaint retirement by the beach, mornings spent sipping coffee and evenings filled with peace. But everything changed when Child Protective Services dropped off her seven-year-old grandson with nothing but a small bag and a shattered heart.
while the holidays are supposedly all about coming together, there’s a reason I’d rather hibernate in my stretch pants, messy bun, maybe a day or two past my last shower, and watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” with an endless supply of eggnog (more precisely, the creamy non-alcoholic kind). All that festive chaos? Not exactly my idea of a good time. As a bipolar mom with manic tendencies and anxiety served with a side of ADHD, holiday gatherings give me a little extra “something” to manage.
As we enter a new year, I must be honest: to me, it just feels heavy. There’s a sinking feeling that’s been lingering in me these past few months, an urge to put the shutters up on life and keep out whatever the future may bring. The uncertainty can feel overwhelming, and it’s tempting to shrink back, to withdraw into a place where things feel safer and more manageable. But even in these moments, I’m beginning to recognize something powerful: God has me here, even now, amid all this uncertainty.
The holiday season is here, and what better way to celebrate than by diving into the latest issue of Leading Hearts magazine? Our Christmas 2024/ January 2025 edition is filled…
Lori Wildenberg A youth pastor shared with me how one of his students told her mom she planned to take her life. According to the pastor, the mother, in an…
I have a twenty-first-century condition experts are now calling hurry sickness. Yes, hurry sickness is a real behavior pattern. The term was coined by cardiologists Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman in their book, Type A Behavior and Your Heart.
Michelle S. Lazurek Some people know they are leaders; others will become leaders if they are willing to put in the work. One of the important elements of leadership is…
Kirsten Panachyda Kirstin Panachyda is an award-winning Bible teacher and award-winning author. Her most recent book is Among Lions: Fighting for Faith and Finding Your Rest while Parenting a Child…
By Edie Melson @ediemelson in the Summer 2019 issue of Leading Hearts Magazine
No, not no to God. But in my years of ministry, I’ve discovered the need to safeguard my time and energy. I’ve also come to realize that can’t be done without learning how to say no.
We all only have so much time in a day. And if you’re like me, life is filled to overflowing. So that means constantly guarding our priorities.
There are a couple of areas where I’ve had to develop discipline in this regard.
I’m bad about seeing a need and equating that with a call to serve. The truth is, God doesn’t call me to fill every ministry hole. He has specific things He wants me to do at specific times in my life.
If I say yes to every opportunity I come across, then God can’t use me in the ways He has planned.
To help me evaluate what to become involved with, I’ve developed a few steps I go through before I say yes.
by Beth Duewel and Rhonda Rhea in Leading Hearts Magazine
All of us can sometimes put our happy spaces in weird places. People get caught up, for instance, in the thread count of their sheets. Thread count. If it’s not Egyptian cotton in a thread count impressive enough to require a greater number of stacks of cash in the bank than the count of the threads in the sheets, suddenly that bed is just not a happy place. It’s all about the thread count. The math is not uncomplicated.
The two of us, Beth and Rhonda, maintain that everyone is getting a little too caught up in the thread count, when shouldn’t the crumb count be a bigger deal? We were talking about it the other day and discovered that we don’t really like the idea of snacking in bed—mostly because we don’t like the idea of sheets that are too…how can we put it…exfoliat-ey. But then later we decided the fact that we’re not bed-snackers might actually be more about the other fact that neither of our husbands are big into exfoliation either.