Photo credit: Nicole Honeywill In September we moved from Virginia to Texas.It took a few months to get unpacked and settled into our new home.I was on Facebook one day soon after and realized that my husband’s cousin also lived in Texas, and not too far from us. We had met in person a few times, but she was not active on Facebook, and we had not stayed connected. I noticed that I was not Facebook friends with her husband, so I sent him a “friend reques ..read more

Photo Credit: Kat Yukawa Scarcity thinking must have been programmed into my DNA. My grandmother once told me that she took me grocery shopping when I was 3 years old, and she offered to buy me a box of animal crackers at the checkout counter. I replied, “I can’t have those. They’re too ‘spensive.” She thought it was cute that I couldn’t even pronounce the word “expensive” and probably didn’t know what it meant. My mother had trained me well not to ask ..read more

Photo credit: Scott Webb Last month my husband kicked our 19 year old daughter out of the house. It was 9:00 pm and she had nowhere to go. He gave her a few minutes to pack a bag and sent her out in the dark with no car. Then he promptly changed the code on the garage door so that she could not get back into the house.Her attitude had been steadily worsening for months. She was not following our house rules, was acting irresponsibly, and had developed a ..read more

Photo credit: Jamie Taylor I used to sell mostly books in my eBay store, most of which came from thrift shops. Once I was shopping at a thrift store in Virginia and a man standing near me started to bang a book against the wall. He looked like he might be intellectually disabled - if a person can look such a way. I just kept on browsing. But soon the banging started to irritate me, and these thoughts ran through my mind:Why is he banging that book?Why does he have to do that?Why doesn’t he stop that?I didn’t make a sound or look in his d ..read more

Photo credit: Sharon McCutcheon As soon as I was old enough to hear stories about Prince Charming, I started dreaming about my own knight in shining armor. Every time I passed a wishing well as a kid, I threw a coin in and wished for a boyfriend.As a young woman I dated and kissed a lot of frogs. The ego is all about seeking and not finding.After numerous failed relationships I had an epiphany: I didn’t know how to pick the right man. I thought I was lacking something, and therefore kept hooking up with men that I thought could complete ..read more

This week I had a huge insight while I was reading my ACIM workbook lesson 136 - Sickness is a defense against the truth.It came when I got to the the paragraph near the end that said:If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again mis­placed yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick. I rarely get sick, but I remembered a few years ago when I was struck by back pain so severe that I could not function.I was fine when I laid down but it was excruciating to stand up or walk aro ..read more

Photo credit: Sunyu Last summer I left my 22 year old son in charge of my house, the dog, and his 18 year old sister for a week. My other daughter was working in North Carolina for the summer and invited me to spend the 4th of July with her. I was very excited about spending time with her as well as being near the beach!  She was working for an adventure tourism company and said that she could hook me up with a free tour and a free place to stay. It was all going just peachy until the night I couldn't reach my son on the phone. He was ..read more

Photo credit: Mathilda Khoo Many years ago, when I worked for the U.S. government, a young colleague of mine was killed in a car accident. My supervisor arranged for a grief counselor to come in to the office and meet with all of the employees who had known him. This grief counselor was the ugliest woman I had ever seen!  I could not get over how unattractive she was, but as she began to speak, something strange started to happen...Her voice was so calm and sweet, and her compassionate nature was so powerful, that it seemed to sweep thro ..read more

Photo credit: Elijah O'Donnell About two years ago my husband developed a habit of watching the news after he climbed into bed. It was always BAD news, and the commentators arguing with one another annoyed me to no end.  I would be in the bathroom getting ready for bed, listening to the sounds coming from the bedroom, and getting tense. My thoughts went like this:Why does he have to listen to that crap?Why won't he change the channel?Why doesn't he choose something I like?It is never productive to ask "why" in these situations.  I deci ..read more

Photo credit: freestocks.org Several years ago when A Course of Love by Mari Perron came out there was a big debate about it my ACIM study group.  Our group facilitator had strong opinions about it!  She started to read it and found passages that were the same as those in A Course in Miracles.  She told all of us that it was -- the horror! -- plagiarized. "Wait a minute", I said, "didn't Mari Perron channel this work from Jesus? If so, then isn't Jesus the real author of BOTH books? And if both books had the same author, then it woul ..read more