We writers are pretty much always on an obsessive search-and-destroy mission for unnecessary words in our work (like “pretty much”). We look for typos, for passive language, for grammatical errors that make us look silly. And we look for echoes, pet words that crop up everywhere because, well, they are our pet words. Heaven forbid…
“Although we talked about our money expectations a little before we got married,” Tim says, “we just didn’t have a good long-term plan. So after we married, I tried to figure it out.” “When you both have the same expectations,” Hannah says, “it’s amazing what you can do. We just don’t fight about money anymore.”…
It was there, in the grocery store, standing half way down the aisle in front of several hundred jars of peanut butter, that I realized something profound about marriage. Despite being a lifelong fan of crunchy peanut butter, I found myself reaching for a large jar marked “smooth and creamy”. Realizing what I was doing,…
With the declining economy, losing a job is more the normal for most families than working with the same employer for 20-30 years. So when a job loss happens for whatever reason, including lay-offs, budget cuts, or something else, it can feel devastating to a family, and even more so to one-income couples. However, Scripture…
It seems everywhere we turn, there are voices granting us permission to fail. This permission to fail and still be loved—this grace—is a beautiful thing, right? Without it, we would forever feel defeated. We’d define ourselves by failure instead of acceptance. But failure isn’t the same thing as quitting. Failure says we were on a…
