Category: spiritual

  • Finding Our Core Identities

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    Jocelyn
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    This past weekend, I had the honor and privilege to speak at a retreat to a group of college student women about “identity.” I.had.so.much.fun. It was work, especially getting ready to speak, but you know how avocational work (work that is outside the bounds of your day job) sometimes doesn’t even feel like work? Well,…

  • Count Your Blessings

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    Jocelyn
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    I sing old hymns to 2boys every time I put them to sleep. One of the hymns I’ve always sung, and my mom tells me it was one of my favorites from the time I was a very little girl, is Count Your Blessings. The chorus goes: Count your blessings, name them one by one. Count…

  • What We’re Looking for in a Church

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    Jocelyn
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    We just moved. And so we’re searching for a new local church to attend, enjoy, give. As a side note, a cross-state move produces the most pleasant circumstances under which to search for a new church: you must give no reasons for leaving your old church besides “We moved” and you must give no reasons…

  • An Antidote for Hard Times: Gratefulness

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    Jocelyn
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    I’m a new mom. And it’s hard. I think it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done to date. I’m disappointed that hard times bring out the worst in me. My friend Todd told me once that it’s hardest for him to care about others’ needs when he’s sick or going through a hard time personally.…

  • Book Review: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

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    Jocelyn
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    I just finished Donald Miller’s newest book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. It has the usual Donald Miller feel: raw, memoir-esque, easy to read, personal. I was both personally challenged and pleasantly surprised by its relevancy for many 18-35 year old readers. (It is a frequent concern of mine that many current bestsellers…

  • How to Be a Runner. For the run of it: Vol 4. Don’t live to run.

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    Jocelyn
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    Run to live. Don’t live to run. My life is better with running in it, but running is not my life. A word of advice about how to be a runner and stay motivated? Don’t let running become your everything. Don’t let it become the thing you obsess over or the thing that defines you.…

  • Walt Whitman and Thoughts about Nature

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    by

    Jocelyn
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    Howard was an unusually happy baby for me today – delightfully long enough for me to read some of The Treasury of Religious Verse, compiled by D.T. Kauffman. Taking care of a 4-month-old is physically taxing and causes mental bankruptcy. I try desperately to reverse the deterioration by reading things that challenge me at a…