Wellness

two elf figurines sitting in front of white wall, looking crazed
Life, Wellness

Staying Sane This Christmas Season

It’s that time of year again… the carolers are singing, the lights on the tree twinkling, and although we can take or leave the sleigh, many of us end up dashing through the snow.

The Christmas season is here, and if you’re anything like me, it’s easy to get swept up into the holiday events and gift giving, overwhelmed by the pressures of our materialistic, Santa-loving culture. To stay sane this time around, here are some bits of wisdom I’m finding to be even better than my family’s stocking-stuffers I’ll soon be wrapping.

top-down view of hands grinding coffee and pouring hot water
Life, Wellness

What Brewing Good Coffee Taught Me About Rest, Discipline, and Love

When someone commits to brewing good coffee, that means they are willing to take the time to do it well. It means they focus on the process instead of just the destination. The automated world has made it so easy to skip over the process. You want something done? Just hit a button and it’s finished. Keurig does it for coffee, but it happens with bills, banking, shopping, dating even. Even churches are trying to tap into this inconvenience-free world of destination over process.

man jumping off a cliff into the ocean
Life, Uncategorized, Wellness

The Beauty of Breaking Free From the Prison of Fear

I wondered aloud to my mother if I could start to trust life again. If I could start to live without looking over my shoulder,
waiting for it to fall apart again, as it had so many times. I can’t remember her exact words but they were
completely clear. These two streams cannot flow together. A life “lived” in fear or lived in freedom. It’s
one or the other, and every time you make a decision in fear, you go further down the path of just
existing.

man wearing backpack, sitting on ledge facing out to city
Life, Wellness

Three Ways to Swipe Away Negative Thinking

Like those silk webs that come out of nowhere and wrap themselves across our skin, our negative thoughts wrap themselves around our psyche. Soon, a day that started out good gets tangled up in negativity. We begin to grumble, chastising ourselves and others. And like those pesky spider webs, we wonder, “How can we swipe away negative thoughts?”