Hit that gas in 2023
While everyone else is hammering on goals for the new year I felt the urge to take a moment of reflection in this last week of the year. Don’t worry – I know the quote about the reverse mirror. “You do not move ahead by constantly looking in a rear view mirror. The past is […]
Fourth Advent: Love
LOVE There’s one Dutch tradition we ditched pretty quickly after moving from the Netherlands to Italy. Some of our Dutch friends are about to be shocked. Sinterklaas didn’t make it. Ask me why later. We now enjoy giving each other gifts around Christmas instead. Two days ago I returned from teaching in a Discipleship Training […]
Third Advent: Joy
JOY Monday morning I woke up to a powerful bright light in our bedroom and the voices of Rianne and our kids singing happy birthday songs to me! They still claim it was our normal bedroom light, but I’m convinced they brought a floodlight from the nearest construction site as a last attempt to finally […]
Second Advent: Peace
PEACE The absence of conflict? When the last bullet has been fired and all weapons have been laid down? We hear about ‘peace talks’ and see images of important looking people shaking firm hands with sincere faces. Last week I wrote about the word ‘Hope’ for the first of four themes for the four Sundays […]
First Advent: Hope
HOPE Hope requires creativity. The ability to see a different future than the reality that is now. Activating hope involves engaging the imagination. Daring to hope includes a good portion of risk that things may not eventually turn out to be as you imagine they will be. Risk to be disappointed. There is a HOPE […]
Happy Dopamine-Day
Thanksgiving is a powerful thing. Not the holiday. Well, that too. I like the holiday. It’s nice. Probably our favourite ‘adopted’ holiday of the year. But thanksgiving, gratefulness, gratitude… It’s powerful! When we practice thanksgiving or gratefulness we activate a part of the brain that is associated with cognitive and emotional processes and it releases […]
Review: Blinkist, Lucid, Mentorist, Headway, Shortform, StoryShots
The information age. The good, the bad and the ugly. While we can access every bit of data at the tip of our fingers, do we really experience anything more deeply than that, or just it all just stay at surface level? Here’s a thing that is a bit of a mystery to me. Podcasts […]
Three Lessons from The Desert Fathers
Not to be confused with Dessert Fathers. (English is my second language and it gets confusing at times.) The Desert Fathers are generally considered… wait, how do we translate this to 21st century language? Let’s just call them the influencers of Christian culture of the 3rd century. Except, instead of them trying to find the public […]
Who’s Raising Who?
Am I handing her the cup or is she handing it to me? Am I raising a daughter or is she raising me? There’s days for teenage daughters that I’m sure it feels more like the latter. “13 doesn’t really feel that old, but 14 does sound kinda old and 13 is only one year […]
Privilege to Dream
Who doesn’t love a good summer road trip? Besides hour-long playlists and quick little games you can play across however many rows of seats your car may have, what are some of your favourite ways to spend time on the road? For our family, we like to dream out loud as we see the other […]