Teaching Our Grands to Do Likewise “Phillip, do you ever let God love you?” Imagine sitting in a crowded airport, enduring a five-hour flight delay, and having a traveling companion ask: “Do you ever let God love you?” This is exactly what happened to best-selling author Phillip Yancy. The woman’s...
Despite the frigid temperatures, February warms our hearts with love and romance. Children decorate shoe boxes with tissue paper and candied hearts. They have hopes of receiving a message from their secret admirer. Women dream about suitors presenting them with diamond rings. Married couples,...
Frustrated with herself, Jane drums her fingers on the surface of the kitchen table. Her new year’s resolution is to treat her family with grace and kindness, even when their choices set her head spinning. However, here she is again, only weeks after the start of 2024, nagging and complaining...
I love wooden train track sets. The more curves and straightaways, bridges and tunnels, junctions and turn-stations, the better. Each of our grandchildren started with the small toddler Brio set. Over the course of the years, we bought more pieces. Having expanded their engineering...
Do you love to sit down with a cup of hot chocolate or a big bowl of popcorn and enjoy a family Christmas movie with your grandchildren? If so, have you considered how movies can be used as conversation starters? During the Thanksgiving holidays, my husband and I watched the animated version of...
Do you anticipate an idyllic family Thanksgiving reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell painting, or does the approaching holiday cause you to wring your hands in angst? Does this time of the year unearth painful memories for you? Do you find yourself in a protective stance, bracing against another...
Introduction: Sharing our faith with our family isn’t always easy. Some of us are separated from our grandchildren by physical miles, while others are separated by the emotional distance created as a result of divorce, broken relationships, misplaced priorities, unwarranted suspicions, time...
What do sugar and screen time have in common? Dopamine. Whether our grandchildren are digging into ice cream sundaes or swiping the screens on their iPads, the effect is the same. A neurotransmitter called dopamine is released in their brain. This chemical travels via neural pathways to the...
“Gampa, is this a shark tooth?” From the water’s edge where she was building sandcastles with their grandchildren, Nancy watched with dismay as her husband continued his stroll down the beach, unaware that their grandson was calling him. “Grandpa…” their grandson tried again. Unsuccessful in his...
Let’s think back to when our children were toddlers. As soon as they became aware of their surroundings, they began inherently learning about cause and effect. For example, they discovered that when they threw a ball up into the air, it came down. When they ate too much birthday cake, they had...
A few months ago, I accepted an assignment from our church to write a devotion about the raising of Lazarus. Writing was a struggle initially because this is such a familiar story. We know that as a result of Jesus’ delay, Lazarus had been dead for four days before he arrived. And despite the...
Have you ever felt like a country music song? You know the song… the kind where the man loses his job; his wife leaves with the kids; his truck won’t start; and his dog is run over by a reindeer. Given that we don’t want to be labeled as grumpy grandparents, nor do we want to model this attitude...
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