I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the things I take for granted. Blessings of everyday life, like being able to turn a knob on the kitchen sink so clean water flows into my glass. Loading the washer with detergent and more clean water, instead of scrubbing clothes in a dirty stream. Heading off to church on Sunday morning without fear of persecution or arrest.

My lifestyle isn’t showy, but it’s comfortable. It’s what I’ve enjoyed for my entire life, a byproduct of freedom. I’m well aware, though, that freedom is not… Read More

Our oldest daughter is a packrat. She always has been. When she was little she would line up her used paper drinking cups and chewing gum on her windowsill. The very thought of throwing anything away was extremely traumatic for her. Fortunately she has mellowed out a bit over the years and become more reasonable about what she must keep. Good thing, too, because later this summer she will become a married woman. And the thought of packing up boxes of used bits of chewing gum and moldy Dixie cups would’ve been painful… Read More

I remember that place, that deciding place of how to educate our children. I remember its weight.

I recall standing there with pudgy hands wrapped around my leg, peering down that road diverged in the yellow wood. Unsure of the next step, the faint whisper from a faint heart came, “Which road for us, Lord?”

We stayed there for awhile waiting, asking, listening. And we found that to hear His voice on how to wisely educate children was best heard on one’s knees. He will speak: Keep your nose in the Book.… Read More

Award-winning author Shelley Adina wrote her first teen novel when she was 13. It was rejected by the literary publisher to whom she sent it, but he did say she knew how to tell a story. That was enough to keep her going through the rest of her adolescence, a career, a move to another country, a B.A. in Literature, an M.A. in Writing Popular Fiction, and countless manuscript pages.

Shelley is a world traveler and pop culture junkie with an incurable addiction to designer handbags. She knows the value of a… Read More

My four year-old is not toilet trained yet. This makes me embarrassed, frustrated, and flummoxed—sometimes all in the same minute. I really think he might be the first kindergartener to go to school in Pull-ups.

We’ve tried everything:

• the encouragement technique: “You can do it!”
• the peer-pressure technique: “Doesn’t everyone else in your class wear underwear?”
• the shaming technique: “Only babies go in their diaper.”
• and finally, the bribe technique: “If you go number two in the potty, we’ll buy you ANYTHING you want from the store.” (By the way, the

For brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love to serve one another.  For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this:  Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.  Galatians 5 13-14, KJV

This freedom which God has given to us is also known as free will.  Along with free will comes the ability to make our very own decisions, and accept the consequences of those decisions.  Along with freedom, comes responsibility.  As George Bernard Shaw said, “Liberty means responsibility.  That is why most men… Read More

I am 31-years-old, and grew up watching you and Kirk on TV everyday. It is awesome that you love God–so do I!

Do you and your brother send your children to a Christian School? If so, why is this so important to you? I have 3 little ones of my own and I am faced with this decision.

_________________________

Thanks for your email. Yes, we send our children to a private Christian school. It’s important for us because I want… Read More

The theme of this month’s CWO issue is Family. In thinking and praying about this topic, I kept coming back to the fact that for me, the word family most often means—friends. I grew up in a very small family. My parents divorced when I was quite young and Mom never remarried. We had no aunts, uncles, cousins, or grandparents on my mom’s side, and most of my father’s relatives became non-existent to us when my parents divorced. Later, when Grandma and Grandpa Gappa passed away, there was no… Read More

One of my all time favorite films is Independence Day. No matter how many times I watch it, I find myself emotionally engaged in the drama, passion and pathos of the story. This film covers such a broad spectrum of button-pushing feelings and sentiments it isn’t funny. Where else can you find a balanced mixture of love and hate, humor and sadness, forgiveness and anger, survival and death, victory and defeat, and good and evil? All that, and Will Smith, too!

If you scroll through all of my CWO columns for the past… Read More

I’ve been so encouraged and inspired by readers and fellow bloggers regarding how they’ve taken bits and pieces from my Reluctant Entertainer theme, and have put those ideas into place in their own lives!  People are experiencing freedom in learning how to serve others in love, focusing on people, many times centered around food!

One recent story went like this:

I just wanted to let you know how inspiring and encouraging your blog is, and to send kudos to you. From seeing all of your great get-togethers with friends, I felt encouraged to invite a couple… Read More

If you’ve been reading—and living—Live Well! for a while, you have already done some soul searching to discover the changes that you’d like to make. You may have sat down to develop a plan, invited God along for the journey, and taken steps to live out that plan in your life. Good. Hopefully you’ve discovered success along the way and are determined to keep on running. That’s a great place to be. Now we’re ready to take a look at the future. Living well is not merely a lifestyle; it’s the means of… Read More

Larry’s been out making friends again.

“Hi … this is Eric. I’m a jogger on the Centennial Trail, and I saw this big black dog lying in the crosswalk when I made my first pass going north. Half hour or so later I turned around and headed back and, well, he’s still here. Friendly guy. Very gentle. Looks like maybe he’s waiting for someone. He talks to everyone who runs past. He’s just … lying there, all stretched out across the trail. Makes you run around him. Thought maybe he was… Read More

This month I received an email with a question that on the surface may seem easy to answer, but in reality can be a hotbed of controversy.  The answers could easily fill an entire book but obviously we don’t have that kind of space.  For that reason, we will address some foundational principles on this topic and perhaps delve into it more in future articles.  Here is what Patty asked:

“Besides your husband, has God given you a best friend to share your ups and downs with?”

In short… Read More

I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection.  But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me.  Philippians 3:12 NLT

I had been tearing pictures from design magazines for years, and had quite a portfolio of ideas collected in anticipation of building my dream home. There were lovely images of warm, elegant bedrooms, functional, inviting kitchens, efficient, well designed offices and fun-filled family rooms. I even had a bag of stones in the colors I… Read More