Gravel Road Musings

Hope for Today from 12 Women of the Bible Eve, Noah's wife, Sarai, Rebekah, Hagar, Lot's wife, Rachel, Leah, Dinah, Potiphar's wife, Tamar, Zipporah, all women with dreams I am sure, visions of how they thought life would turn out, all disappointed. I guess we could look at this list and say Eve started it all and really she did, but it's pretty pointless to go there. Sin happened and now we are left to deal with the results of living in a broken world. And since our world is broken, we will get hurt and we will hurt others. Look at Rachel and Leah. Rachel and Jacob loved each other dearly but were crushed by Laban's decision to force Leah into the mix. And we often don't think about Leah's feelings in all of this. Jill brought out a different aspect in this book. Did Leah secretly love Jacob too? Was she a willing conspirator in becoming the bride of Jacob or was she forced into the deception too? Either way, she suffered a lot in her life because of ...

9 Keys to Building a Positive Lifelong Relationship with Your Kids What is my why in parenting? This is the question I take away from the book, the one I want to think about occasionally. Michael Hyatt said, "People lose their way when they lose their why." And to quote Mike Berry, the author, "When we don't know why we are doing something, when we've forgotten our purpose, we get lost." "Remember that you are in this because you love your child, and ultimately you want to raise a human being who lives with character and integrity and who leaves a lasting impression on the world."  That sums it up well, that is why I try to be consistent, that is why I listen and try to answer 10,000 questions a day, that is why I am trying to teach obedience and respect and responsibility.  But it is easy to lose the long-term focus and just see the day and all its pressures and frustrations and lose heart and patience. Mike offers some good practical soluti...

Let me start by saying I will read anything Rachel Hauck writes. I have read six to ten of her books so far and have loved them all, but especially the books that take two generations and by flipping back and forth between the characters, tell both of their stories. And I am not usually a fan of that, because too often I find I really like the one character and don't really care about the other one. But not in Rachel's books. They draw you in and she makes the characters likable and so you just want to cheer all of them on. I'm not sure if I can give you a favorite book, but The Memory House  is a good place to start. I think I read The Wedding Chapel  first and that was also an amazing read. And now, on to the story. Two ladies: one lost her family, one lost her memories and her dad. Both wander lost, unwilling and unable to move on fully with life. Everleigh, based in the 1950s and beyond, is viewed as having one foot in the grave already because she is unwilling to m...

John 3:16   (link to video) I've been working on memorization for Amber. She is a sponge and can recite portions of her story tapes, so why not use her ability to memorize and fill her brain with Scripture? So we decided to learn John 3:16, which took her a matter of days and she could say it, with one problem. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only forgotten  son....."  Oops, that's kind of a big deal, huh? But then I thought a bit more: forgotten Son, hmm, how many times do I forget Him? How many times do I go through my day acting as though I know nobody by the name of Jesus? Acting as though He is an impersonal being and has no effect on how I speak, how I live, or how I act? I may have mentioned this on here before, I can't remember, but one thing that has been a huge blessing to me this year, 2019, is I feel a real desire to know God more. Yes, I have always said I want to know God more and I did, but this year, this sea...

How Positive Words can Heal How many of you can remember words that were spoken to you as a child, but made a lasting impression on your life? Maybe they were spoken out of anger, frustration, or maybe out of kindness and love, both can be very long-lasting. Mary explores the power that negative words can have on a person. She gives examples of words spoken on a playground that had the power to linger and be on the tip of the person's tongue 70 or so years later. She also brings out the fact that hurting people hurt people and if we can look behind the words that were spoken to the why of why they were spoken it can help us as we process their effect on our lives. But as children, we are incapable of doing that and those words can do damage. There is the flip side though as well, words that were spoken to a child to lift them up and support them and encourage them can also stick in their minds and inspire them to greatness. It is very sobering and has really made me stop an...

Business Powered by Relationships "The single greatest factor impeding healthy relationships is myopia." Randy says this tends to look like me-first. "It's the tendency to make choices based on what is best for me, with blatant disregard for how choices may impact those around me." "A good marriage is a work of art crafted over the course of time by two broken people who recognize their frailty and extend grace to each other." Now I recognize that that last quote seems completely unrelated to the title of the book and in many ways it is, except the context in which this quote was placed in the book. Randy was called in to help solve some less than desirable work relationships and realized the manager was also on the brink of divorce. He focuses instead initially on this man's relationship with his wife, gives him some feedback on what he should take responsibility for in that relationship and then, over the course of time, divided his time ...