The Mom I Want to Be:
Rising Above Your Past to Give
Your Kids a Great Future,
by T. Suzanne Eller
(Harvest House 2006)

Author and mom of three, T. Suzanne Eller, takes readers on a journey exploring her painful past as the daughter of a single mom who survived abuse and years of depression. Eller’s passion is to enable today’s women to face and overcome negative memories in order to become the moms they long to be. Her candid story includes end-of-chapter questions, making this a great book for… Read More

How many flowers are you able to name? I recognize common flowers like roses, tulips, mums, violets, lilies, and daffodils, but if you propped me behind the microphone on a game show and drilled me with floral flashcards, my brain would short-circuit.

Botanists claim that they’ve documented more than 270,000 different species of flowers. That’s quite a bouquet! Paleobotanists (those who have dedicated their lives to the study of fossilized plants and animals) have discovered fossilized flowers that resemble magnolias. Imagine the moment a sweet-scented magnolia broke free from its stem and… Read More

There is just something about the arrival of spring that makes most of us want to fluff our nests! We’ve been sitting inside all winter feeling snug as a bug, when suddenly the sun shines through our dirty windows to reveal dust we didn’t even know we had! Yikes! Our little nests need some attention. Yes, my friends, it is time to start fluffing, so let’s get to it!

Here are ten creative ways that you can start fluffing your nest this Spring:

1. Start with your windows. You

Mother ducks pick feathers from their chests to line their nests

Houses may be bought, built, or borrowed. But homes can only be made, and that with ourselves. Or so the ducks told me.

They told me without a sound, just simply as they preened and nestled, oil on canvas. The children press in close too, for a better look at Alexander Max Koester’s painting Ducks, and I read aloud the caption below

There’s never a dull moment in the Y’Barbo household! From hockey and cheer mom to publicist to bestselling author, Kathleen Y’Barbo somehow manages to do it all—and do it well. While wearing her publicist’s hat, Kathleen has secured interviews with radio, television, and print media for clients at NavPress, Hatchette, Integrity, Barbour Publishing, and Broadman & Holman, to name a few. She also brings her own unique blend of Southern charm and witty prose to the more than 350,000 award-winning novels and novellas currently in print. Her… Read More

As I am writing this column about springtime, a blizzard is swirling, hurling snow and wind against my warm and snug house. Spring seems like such a long way off. But its promises beckon me to contemplate the next season–the promise of new birth, of an awakening of the earth from the dead of winter into the aliveness of spring, of shaking away the dirt and mustiness of my life and opening up to God’s refreshing light and His promise of a new life with Him.

Spring… Read More

I read your article from “Broward Family Life,” and was very enlightened. I grew up watching you on “Full House,” and now my daughter Nicole, who is 8, is watching you too. She has every season. How funny is that?

In the article I read that you are involved with 4 Kids of South Florida. I very much wanted to be a foster mother, but they want you to attend some 40 hours of classes at night, which is impossible for me since I have an 8-yr-old and I work fulltime… Read More

Do you feel it?  Spring is in the air! For some of you I wish I could say all your cold weather is gone, but then I would have to follow up with an “April Fools.”  Soon, very soon, it will be summer. Unless you are like me and live in sunny Florida where winter only lasts one month. Here in the US, April is also tax season; some of you are waiting until the last minute to remit, because you may owe, and some of you have already received your returns and… Read More

We recently had a few inches of snow here in the Dallas area, reminding us that winter is not quite over and yet spring is knocking at the door. The “snow” came and went in a matter of a few hours, very unlike the snow I’d been accustomed to seeing in March and early April while living in Minnesota.

Spring is beginning to bud in the gardens around my neighborhood and I’m thinking of all the things this new season brings. What comes immediately to my mind are change and… Read More

And as it was budding, its blossoms came out, and its clusters produced ripe grapes. Genesis 40:10b (NAS)

As winter memories fade we begin to see new life springing forth everywhere we look. Tender shoots once again push their way through soil as the sun’s warm beams beckon.  The trees look ready to burst into green lusciousness at any moment. The sounds are different, the smells are different. Spring is bursting forth!

There is a newness, a freshness and a feeling of freedom that comes with spring.  The world around us is transformed.

Windows closed for… Read More

Do you hope to lose weight but fail time and again? Do you lust after food, and lack self control? If so, you’re not alone. Results from the 2003-2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), indicate that an estimated 66 percent of U.S. adults are either overweight or obese.i Startling statistics like that cause us to wonder where the heart of our modern society lies.

This month, we’re talking about self-discipline: the nitty-gritty business of controlling our actions, that… Read More

The only things I can move right now, without wincing, are my fingertips. If you watched me walk across the room this morning, you’d think I was trying to recover from injuries I sustained when I failed to jump my motorcycle over twenty brand new Mini Coopers down at Bellowin’ Bob’s Autos. Or at the very least, a mugging. But no. Mine are “exercise wounds,” and lest we all forget–it’s a “good” pain.

It’s been a week of water aerobics, weight lifting, elliptical riding, walking and biking. No, I’m not training… Read More