When I was a kid, I was all about the fiction stories: Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Trixie Belden, Grace Livingston Hill, and so on. I loved the mystery, and I also loved the love stories. Then, I “grew up,” and life changed from the simplicity of childhood and teenage...

When my friend Melessa shared that her word of the year is trust, it immediately struck something deep in me. It is one of those words that sounds simple until you actually try to live it. When we think about trust, most of us like the idea of it until...

Every year around this time, I choose a word of the year. Not a resolution. Not a five-step self-improvement plan. Not a New Year’s Resolution. Just one word. And honestly, I love that. It’s doable. It’s applicable. And it sticks with me all year. I think choosing a word matters...

There’s a season of writing no one really talks about—the one where you still love the story, but your body, your energy, or your circumstances don’t quite keep pace with your imagination. I’ve been there recently. Over the past months, my writing rhythm slowed. Not because the story stopped mattering,...

I have always loved stories. Books, of course, but also the kind told across a dinner table, or whispered on a front porch, or shared with a friend at just the right moment. Some of the most healing stories in my life were never written on paper. Stories remind us...

Some weights are invisible. No one else sees them, but we feel them every hour of the day. For me, it is often the pressure to meet expectations. Sometimes those expectations are spoken, but more often they live in my own head. The result is the same: a heaviness that...