This day we call Thanksgiving started as a day of giving thanks and sacrifice for the blessing of the harvest and the preceding year which began in the year 1606. As we celebrate today, and being thankful I am reminded of a quote by Johannes A. Gaertner, “To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch heaven.” What a powerful quote where the ending sticks in my brain not to be forgotten. But it the heat of the day, the battle of getting all the things we need to get done, such as shuttling kids around, doing our punchout list after the kids go to bed, getting supper on the table, doing the laundry, making sure kid’s h

The other day I was having a meeting with a group of people about helping shape conversations and the culture of our small town into something very positive as words create worlds. And gossip creates suspicions, and suspicions create distrust. But deeper than that, this group of people help shape and create our world in our small town, and it was a group of people that I knew may disagree with what I had to say, the perspective and thought process I was prepared to give, the questions I was going to ask. But in knowing the conversation may be uncomfortable, I had to lay that groundwork, to prepare them for the discomfort, all while knowing I was a bit uncomfortable myself. In Nels version

Do you find yourself checking your phone while waiting in lines, or while waiting for your food to come at a restaurant? Or maybe you check it on breaks at work or while waiting at the veterinarian’s office. This last Saturday while I was working, a couple came with a couple of pups for vaccinations, and as I observed them, it became apparent to me that both had their phones glued to their hands for every single minute, and with virtually every non-eventful minute, both had their eyes glued to their phone screens. But for many people, it isn’t just screen time, it is internet time on a desktop or laptop that we may be addicted too as well. The internet holds valuable information, great le

Have you ever thought about sitting down and writing a letter to your younger self? A letter filled with the missteps that created your pain, experiences that took you to great depths of feeling alone and afraid, and the opportunities of not sucking on the lemons we get handed? All in an effort to put someone else two steps ahead of all the painful memories still running through your head, and change the choices that they make. There is a song about just this thought by Mercy me titled “Dear Younger Me”. And every time I hear this song, I’m taken back to several memories in which if I had a “do-over”, I’d take it. For me, at 43, the reflections become deeper, maybe longer at times, and