faith

Bara mother with child by luca gargano

Of Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips, Times That Hurt and Being a Good Mother …

Various times and stages of life often resemble the taste of salt and vinegar potato chips.

At certain points in living the flavor conjured by our experiences leaves a bitter taste that draws on our vulnerabilities. This bitter taste does not ward us off, but rather as with my eating the salt and vinegar potato chips leaves us hungry for more.

As a daughter who is also a mother, I find

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April Shower by laura cooper---new england--13663433385_e92fe03f35_o(1).jpg

Of Our Eldest Daughter, Gratitude, and Experiencing The Worth of Our Living …

Witnessing our eldest graduate college in May 2009 and then graduate school eighteen months later in December 2010 delivered me to a new level of confidence and belief in myself.

I realized that something of all I had done as a mother had worked in nurturing our eldest daughter into not onl

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"Sylvatica" by Andre Barker

Of Mothers, Daughters and Seeing Each Other Eye-to-Eye …

Witnessing our eldest graduate college in May 2009 and then graduate school eighteen months later in December 2010 delivered me to a new level of confidence and belief in myself.

I realized that something of all I had done as a mother had worked in nurturing our eldest daughter into not only a good citizen, but one who had goals and plans for achieving those goals.

When after earning her graduate degree in

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Of Actions, Integrity and Trusting Our Choices…

In stating, “…mothers and daughters cannot serve as best friends to the other…,” Linda Perlman Gordon and Susan Morris Shaffer add in an excerpt from Too Close for Comfort: Questioning the Intimacy of Today’s New Mother-Daughter Relationship , that the …basic question… a mother must answer is: “…Do you trust your daughter to be an independent and self-sufficient woman? Can you support her in making choices and doing things differently from how you would do them?”

The answer a mother offers lies within her ability or inability to trust

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Paulette Harper Johnson

You write about overcoming mental depression by drawing on Christian religious and spiritual principles in your books That Was Then, This Is Now and Completely Whole.



1. Tell us a little about your life.

I was born and raised in Northern California. I am the youngest of eight children and the first published author. I have two daughters and I have one grand daughter (whom I intend to spoil).

2. What personal experience allowed you insight into understanding mental depression?


And what is one Christian spiritual/religious principle have you drawn on for help?

I went through a very difficult divorce that nearly devastated me.





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Katherine Harms–writer aboard S/Y No Boundaries

When I first began writing, I wanted to write, because I wanted to have published something.

In 2000, I started writing, because I had something to say.

In 2000, during Lent I studied the life of Hannah, the mother of Samuel as a model for making sacrifices.

By the autumn, I was working on a novel about Hannah.

I had discovered that her faith journey in ancient Israel had many parallels with the faith journey of a woman in the twenty-first century, despite the three millennia that separated Hannah and me.

In 2004, my book, Hannah’s Journal, placed third in a field of 270 entries in the Christian Writers Guild First Novel Contest.

That book is still unpublished, but my success in the contest invigorated me.

I soon tackled two more novels, which are at present unfinished. The reason is that I continued to develop a better sense of direction as a writer.

In the beginning, I almost dismissed my non-fiction writing as busy work, something to do when I couldn’t think of any stories.

I wrote meditations, prayers, worship guides, articles and teaching plans.

While I struggled with the problems of plot, character development, setting, dialogue and so forth that are part of the craft of a fiction writer, I wrote commentary and background spontaneously, as a natural outgrowth of my research.

One day I had the mind-boggling revelation that it was possible to be a successful writer without selling a novel.

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Of Bishops, Kindreds Spirits and the Dawning of Awareness…

The Bishop in chess moves diagonally along the squares of the chessboard until it encounters another playing piece.

The various directions in which the Bishop can move create a cross upon the chess board. Less powerful than the Queen or Rook, one Bishop equals the strength of a Knight or 3 Pawns. Like the Rook, Queen, Knight and Pawns of the same color or player, the Bishop seeks to protect the King from capture.

Each player has two Bishops.

While one Bishop stands between the Knight and the Queen the second Bishop stands on the other side of the Queen and beside the King.

In this way the Bishop is the piece or character after the Queen to hold close proximity to the King.

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