I’ve participated in The Gypsy Mama’s Friday writing prompt “Five Minute Fridays” numerous times over the past year. She gives a prompt and then we write, unedited, for five minutes. Then publish it. This post, on the prompt “deep breath,” is my favorite. P.S. I made a hilarious error writing it so fast. Can you…

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Troubleshooting a broken printer… shaking ink cartridges to eek more life out of them… ink splattering all over the floor. Baking cookies… bumping the mixer’s ON switch accidentally… flour billowing everywhere. Washing piles of dishes… soaking a pan… running water all over the counter instead of down into the sink. Dirty laundry… piled at the…

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Read the end of my handwritten story on World Vision’s blog, where I’m posting today as part of their 12 Blogs of Christmas series. Life:Unmasked That post? It’s all my handwriting. I wrote an entire story the old-fashioned way. (I know, I know — I also scanned it and Photoshopped it and uploaded it to…

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Instead of writing the life:unmasked post I had planned to write, I spent last night with my husband, hashing out a recent blog post of mine on church membership and church discipline. It took that long to determine that we didn’t actually disagree, but that the words I wrote didn’t convey, at least to him,…

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At least three times a week, I tell my kids, “Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do. It’s part of growing up.” And at least three times a week, I tell myself the same thing. I really wasn’t in the mood to decorate for Christmas this weekend. It’s gray and rainy…

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Since this is life:unmasked day, I will be honest. I struggled to write this post. It’s been a rough week in a lot of ways. But I forced myself to step back and look a little wider, and there it was — gratitude, even in the threadbare places. Last week I displayed a lack of…

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