The best seller, The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin is the account of the year she spent test-driving studies and theories about how to be happier. She also has an informative and inspirational web site and you can sign up to receive daily uplifting emails. One daily post she sent out in August continues to resonate with me. Rubin writes:“A while back, when I ran into an old family friend, he said, “Let me tell you one of my personal secrets for happiness: Control your exit.""'Control your exit?’” I asked blankly. “What exactly does that mean?”“It means, always be able to leave when you want. Drive yourself to a party instead of getting a ride, so you can leave when you’re ready. . .  This resolution struck me as a slightly anti-social resolution, but I could see the sense of it…It occurs to me that “Control your exit” is advice that’s figuratively true, too. For me, a memorable piece of advice from Stephen Covey's classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is Begin with the … [Read more...]

Image by RichDelux via FlickrWe visited “The Bodies Revealed” last week in Toledo.  Being a nurse I have always been fascinated by the wonder of the human body, so dragged my poor non-medical husband through an exhibit that some people would find gross.  I loved it!Bodies Revealed exposes the human body in unprecedented detail normally reserved for medical professionals. The human body specimens are preserved through a new technique called polymer preservation. In the process, human tissue is permanently preserved using liquid silicone rubber that is treated and hardened. The end result is a rubberized specimen, preserved to the cellular level, showcasing the complexity of the body’s many bones, muscles, nerves, blood vessels and organs. All of the bodies and partial specimens were donated to accredited medical universities and all died from natural causes.The details in the human body reveal just how much God attunes to every minute details to our lives.Think about this:1.     The … [Read more...]

Image by -g-r-a-c-e- via Flickr I finished washing my face and searched the counter with my hand for my glasses. Ah, there they are.Putting them on didn’t bring the usual clarity I was used to, but a strange vision of colored lights and blurred objects.Water spots on both of the lenses distorted my view and created a surreal world before my eyes.Cleaning and drying the glasses, of course, brought everything back into the right perspective and I went on with my day.This morning during my devotions, my mind kept wandering, thinking about all the things I had to “do” today and the urgency of my all-important to-do list. Definitely my heart and patience wasn’t in my bible reading. I was not paying attention and to be honest, skimmed the lesson in front of me. Then I recalled yesterday’s relatively minor incident with my glasses. Odd memory to come up at this time, I thought.Lord, is there something You are trying to tell me?  I knew God was nudging me to explore and to dig a … [Read more...]