Memorial Day began as a day of remembrance for those who gave their life in service to their country. Over the years, it has become a holiday to remember and honor our dead, whether they served in the military or not.
Holidays are days we celebrate, but they can also lead to a wave of grief because they remind us of family who are no longer here. Counselors sometimes call this “anniversary grief” since it can be triggered by the anniversary of our loved one’s death or by other special days throughout the year. A favorite restaurant, vacation place or even a certain smell may also act as a trigger. This wave of emotion can carry with it all the same feelings and reactions as your original grief. It does not mean you have regressed in the healing process.
Simply knowing anniversary grief may occur can help prepare you to positively and effectively handle it. It may last a day or weeks. Grief has no time limit. Denying how you feel will keep you from moving forward with healing and may intensify your loss. Instead, acknowledge your emotions and allow yourself to process them. As you remember your loved one throughout the year, rather than focus on your loss ponder the good times and special memories you created together.
For further reading on coping with grief, visit http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/grief/MH00036
Debra L. Butterfield © 2011
Kick Start Your Dreams
Three Super-Simple Kick Start Living Your Dreams – in the next 15 minutes
By Kathi Lipp
Is there a dream that God has given you, but you are waiting until the kids are grown and you have money in the bank before you get started?
You may not be able to enroll in a month long pastry making class or take a week off of work to get started on your novel, but today you can take three little baby steps to making your dream a day-to-day reality.
1. Go Public with It
It’s a little scary to tell the world what you want to do when you grow up—but this is one little step could get you closer to living your dream than almost any other. Plus—it takes very little time and you don’t have to raid your kid’s college fund to make it happen.
When you gather up all your courage and tell your best friend, “I want to learn how to paint,” suddenly she remembers an old art book she has laying around she would love to give you, or her friend from church who teaches art classes. The people you know and love want to be a resource. Give them the privilege of being a part of making your dream happen.
2. Join an Online Group
This is one of the simplest—and cheapest—ways to start exploring your passion. Find out who else is talking about restoring antiques and listen to their conversation. Start by Googling your interest along with the term “online groups.” You will be amazed with the number of people who want to talk about the proper way to care for 1950’s lunchboxes as much as you do.
3. Don’t be Afraid to Pray
I remember the first time I put an offer in on a house—I wanted it more than I had wanted almost anything else in my life. While I knew that I had dozens of other people praying on my behalf, I was too scared to pray.
I didn’t want God to tell me no. I was afraid to pray until my co-worker Kim asked me (in a loving, kind way), why I didn’t believe that God wanted His best for me. Don’t be afraid to pray—as with anything amazing in my life, the path is never what I expected, but it has always been obvious that God’s hand has been on it the whole way.
Kathi Lipp is a busy conference and retreat speaker, currently speaking each year to thousands of women throughout the United States. She is the author of The Husband Project and The Marriage Project, serves as food writer for Nickelodeon, and has had articles published in several magazines, including Today’s Christian Woman and Discipleship Journal. Kathi and her husband, Roger, live in California and are the parents of four teenagers and young adults. See: www.kathilipp.com
By Kathi Lipp
Is there a dream that God has given you, but you are waiting until the kids are grown and you have money in the bank before you get started?
You may not be able to enroll in a month long pastry making class or take a week off of work to get started on your novel, but today you can take three little baby steps to making your dream a day-to-day reality.
1. Go Public with It
It’s a little scary to tell the world what you want to do when you grow up—but this is one little step could get you closer to living your dream than almost any other. Plus—it takes very little time and you don’t have to raid your kid’s college fund to make it happen.
When you gather up all your courage and tell your best friend, “I want to learn how to paint,” suddenly she remembers an old art book she has laying around she would love to give you, or her friend from church who teaches art classes. The people you know and love want to be a resource. Give them the privilege of being a part of making your dream happen.
2. Join an Online Group
This is one of the simplest—and cheapest—ways to start exploring your passion. Find out who else is talking about restoring antiques and listen to their conversation. Start by Googling your interest along with the term “online groups.” You will be amazed with the number of people who want to talk about the proper way to care for 1950’s lunchboxes as much as you do.
3. Don’t be Afraid to Pray
I remember the first time I put an offer in on a house—I wanted it more than I had wanted almost anything else in my life. While I knew that I had dozens of other people praying on my behalf, I was too scared to pray.
I didn’t want God to tell me no. I was afraid to pray until my co-worker Kim asked me (in a loving, kind way), why I didn’t believe that God wanted His best for me. Don’t be afraid to pray—as with anything amazing in my life, the path is never what I expected, but it has always been obvious that God’s hand has been on it the whole way.
Kathi Lipp is a busy conference and retreat speaker, currently speaking each year to thousands of women throughout the United States. She is the author of The Husband Project and The Marriage Project, serves as food writer for Nickelodeon, and has had articles published in several magazines, including Today’s Christian Woman and Discipleship Journal. Kathi and her husband, Roger, live in California and are the parents of four teenagers and young adults. See: www.kathilipp.com
The Shepherd and His Sheep
Terrorists bombed a bus in Israel today wounding 31 people and killing 1. Civil war is tearing Libya apart and impacting the world. An earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant failures wrought disaster in Japan. Fear can leave us wondering, What’s going to happen next and how close to home will it strike?
The psalmist King David wrote “The Lord is my shepherd; I have everything I need” (Psalm 23:1, NLT). The New International Version states it this way, “The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing.”
David was a shepherd. He understood a shepherd leads, protects and provides for the flock. No matter what came his way, he knew God, as his shepherd, would provide what was needed. David’s intimate relationship with God led him to this complete trust.
When we are afraid to trust someone it is because we think that person won’t do what he said he would do. We’re afraid our trust will leave us left empty handed. Unfortunately, that same mistrust of people pollutes our relationship with God.
Trust comes through knowledge.
My time spent reading the Bible has led me to verses like these:
“God is our refuge and strength,
always ready to help in times of trouble.
So we will not fear when earthquakes come
and the mountains crumble into the sea” (Psalm 46:2, NLT).
“God is not a man, so he does not lie.
He is not human, so he does not change his mind.
Has he ever spoken and failed to act?
Has he ever promised and not carried it through?” (Numbers 23:19, NLT).
Trust comes through experience.
There have been times in my life when I didn’t know how I was going to pay the rent or put food on the table. But I cried out to God to provide a way to pay the rent and buy food; to provide wisdom and strength to endure until the circumstances past. And he has always come through.
Like David, my relationship with God has taught me I can trust him. I can stand confident in God in whatever comes my way. Are you struggling to trust God? Do you feel he has let you down? Leave your comments or encouragement below.
Debra L. Butterfield © 2011
Q&A with Pamela Sonnenmoser
Tell us a little about your background and how you got into the ministry.
“My parents were evangelists and from the time I was a little girl, I thought I wanted to go into some kind of ministry. As I grew up, dreams of reaching people for God took a back seat to reaching for happiness and peace in everything the world had to offer. For six years I wandered in the wilderness of worldly pleasure. When I finally came back to the Lord, I thought he would never be able to use me because I had done too many horrible things. In 1996, God spoke to my heart in such a way that I knew He wanted me to surrender that prideful thinking and submit to His calling on my life. I finally realized it didn’t matter what I’d done before. It only mattered that I gave my life completely to the Lord.”
What was your inspiration for Praise & Paraphrase?
“I have always loved object lessons. I think having parents in ministry helped me to find examples of God’s truth in things we see every day. It seems like no matter what I am doing, the Lord uses the normal things in my life to show me what He is trying to teach me. When I speak, I use a lot of these stories and object lessons. People kept asking me to repeat the stories, so I decided to make them into devotionals. Eventually, Praise & Paraphrase was born.”
Now that Praise & Paraphrase is out in bookstores, do you have any projects that you're currently working on?
An excerpt from Praise & Paraphrase:
Baked Potatoes
All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.- Hebrews 12:11
I love baked potatoes. Not nuked potatoes, but baked in the oven at 350 degrees, for an hour - BAKED potatoes. If you only bake them for 10 minutes they will still be hard. The potato cannot yield to the heat of the oven in just a few minutes. It needs the full baking time to be perfectly done - crispy skin, fluffy on the inside.
Sometimes as Christians we don’t want to stay in the heat very long. We want God to perfect our faith with a microwave instead of the fire. But there is something different about a Christian that tries to take a short cut around the fire. Just like those microwaved potatoes aren’t the same as a REAL baked potato.
What I really love is a great twice-baked potato. To be twice baked the potato spends an hour in the heat, then it is taken out, cut open, its insides are scraped out and crushed. Good things are added to it and finally everything is put back into the shell. That potato has to go back into the oven at that point; back into the heat. Finally it is perfected and ready to serve.
I want to be like a twice-baked potato; perfected by the process God requires, having all of myself removed and having the extra things that come from the Holy Spirit added. I want to be yielded by His refining fire again and again. I long to be ready to serve the glory of God.
Where can readers find your book?
“Praise & Paraphrase can be ordered directly from me at www.freshcupministries.com or on Amazon, and from your local bookstores.”
Head on over to Pamela's blog to enter the drawing for not only copies of Pamela's book, but also a larger prize pack. Just click the Fresh Cup Ministries link above.
Life in Exile by Guest Blogger Kristi Bothur
I've heard the words hundreds of times. "'I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future'" (Jer. 29:11). Words often spoken with the intention of instilling hope, but so often they bring back that ugly bitterness in my heart, an unwelcome companion since my second-trimester miscarriage. What hope? What future, when the child I planned to raise is gone?? When I don't know if I'll ever get pregnant again? I have been harmed – physically, emotionally, spiritually. What kinds of plans are these, God?
Sometimes, though, I forget that these words were spoken to a people who had as little reason to hope as I feel I do. The Israelites were in exile in Babylon. They were a conquered people; their city and temple had been destroyed; they were far from home, and decades away from the Lord restoring them to their land. The older ones would not live to see that day. What hope, what future could they have? And yet, God gave them a task while they were in exile: Build houses. Settle down. Increase in number; do not decrease; seek the peace and prosperity of the city where you are exiled. In other words, live. Don't put life on hold, waiting to return to the Promised Land.
When I lost my daughter Naomi, I felt like I was going into exile. I had been in the pregnancy "club" where women talk about birth and labor and nurseries and baby showers, where the doctor's office was full of pregnancy and baby magazines. When I went back for a check-up after our loss, they scheduled me at a time for gynecology appointments, not pregnant women. The waiting room was the same, but I noticed – the magazines were gone. In their place were women's magazines that didn't scream "baby" on the cover. And while I'm sure they did that to save women the heartache of the reminder of what they'd lost, to me it was a stark reminder that I had switched club memberships, from expectant mother to mother of a baby in heaven.
I'd been exiled from the Promised Land. I felt conquered, defeated, without hope.
And yet – God had a task for me, too. To "increase, not decrease" – by committing myself to continue growing spiritually, emotionally, and relationally. Would my time in exile end with a less mature woman than I had been at the beginning? Or would I use this time to grow? "Build houses" – I needed to commit to building the family and marriage that I have been given. Marriages have the potential to suffer terribly after the loss of a child. Would mine become a statistic, or would it come through stronger? "Seek the peace and prosperity" of my city of exile. I do not like the city of Pregnancy Loss. I don't think anyone who lives here does. But while I'm here, I can seek the peace and prosperity of those who live here with me – through prayer, encouragement, and a shoulder to cry on. I can build friendships with others who have been exiled here with me and help bring them back to the Promised Land – not the Land of Pregnancy, necessarily, but the Land of Hope and the Future, where we seek and find the One who does have plans for us and who longs to hold us in his comforting arms. And by seeking their "peace", I find peace, too, both within myself and with God.
Sometimes, though, I forget that these words were spoken to a people who had as little reason to hope as I feel I do. The Israelites were in exile in Babylon. They were a conquered people; their city and temple had been destroyed; they were far from home, and decades away from the Lord restoring them to their land. The older ones would not live to see that day. What hope, what future could they have? And yet, God gave them a task while they were in exile: Build houses. Settle down. Increase in number; do not decrease; seek the peace and prosperity of the city where you are exiled. In other words, live. Don't put life on hold, waiting to return to the Promised Land.
When I lost my daughter Naomi, I felt like I was going into exile. I had been in the pregnancy "club" where women talk about birth and labor and nurseries and baby showers, where the doctor's office was full of pregnancy and baby magazines. When I went back for a check-up after our loss, they scheduled me at a time for gynecology appointments, not pregnant women. The waiting room was the same, but I noticed – the magazines were gone. In their place were women's magazines that didn't scream "baby" on the cover. And while I'm sure they did that to save women the heartache of the reminder of what they'd lost, to me it was a stark reminder that I had switched club memberships, from expectant mother to mother of a baby in heaven.
I'd been exiled from the Promised Land. I felt conquered, defeated, without hope.
And yet – God had a task for me, too. To "increase, not decrease" – by committing myself to continue growing spiritually, emotionally, and relationally. Would my time in exile end with a less mature woman than I had been at the beginning? Or would I use this time to grow? "Build houses" – I needed to commit to building the family and marriage that I have been given. Marriages have the potential to suffer terribly after the loss of a child. Would mine become a statistic, or would it come through stronger? "Seek the peace and prosperity" of my city of exile. I do not like the city of Pregnancy Loss. I don't think anyone who lives here does. But while I'm here, I can seek the peace and prosperity of those who live here with me – through prayer, encouragement, and a shoulder to cry on. I can build friendships with others who have been exiled here with me and help bring them back to the Promised Land – not the Land of Pregnancy, necessarily, but the Land of Hope and the Future, where we seek and find the One who does have plans for us and who longs to hold us in his comforting arms. And by seeking their "peace", I find peace, too, both within myself and with God.
Your Teen Can Own a Micro Business
How to Launch It in Ten Simple Steps
by Carol Topp, CPA
“I want to walk dogs; what do I need to do to get started?” asked a teen boy. I had inspired him to think about starting a micro business and he was ready to get going!
I encourage teenagers to start very small businesses—micro businesses. A micro business is a one-person business that can be started easily, usually without any up-front cash, using what a teenager already owns. Micro businesses are usually home-based and very flexible so a busy student can keep up with homework, sports and a social life.
Teenagers can use their skills to develop businesses such as teaching guitar lessons, doing web design or caring for children. Other teenagers have started micro businesses by offering services such as house cleaning, pet care, and lawn mowing. One easy-to-start micro business is tutoring. Some students tutor math, Spanish or computer programs such as Photoshop.
After your teenager has an idea, he or she can launch a micro business in a short amount of time with very little start up money. Share these starting steps with your teen:
Carol Topp, CPA advises teenage business owners through her Micro Business for Teens book series. Carol’s day job is accountant to business owners, and she enjoys teaching teenagers to succeed beyond their dreams. Students appreciate how she shares what they need to know in clear and helpful lessons. Her website is MicroBusinessForTeens.com
How to Launch It in Ten Simple Steps
by Carol Topp, CPA
I encourage teenagers to start very small businesses—micro businesses. A micro business is a one-person business that can be started easily, usually without any up-front cash, using what a teenager already owns. Micro businesses are usually home-based and very flexible so a busy student can keep up with homework, sports and a social life.
Teenagers can use their skills to develop businesses such as teaching guitar lessons, doing web design or caring for children. Other teenagers have started micro businesses by offering services such as house cleaning, pet care, and lawn mowing. One easy-to-start micro business is tutoring. Some students tutor math, Spanish or computer programs such as Photoshop.
After your teenager has an idea, he or she can launch a micro business in a short amount of time with very little start up money. Share these starting steps with your teen:
- Conduct a mini market survey. Start by asking a few potential customers if they need your service and what price they are willing to pay.
- Decide on a price. From the mini-market survey, you should be able to set a fair price. You may get your first customers by undercharging the competition. One teenager charged half what other piano teachers charged and quickly had eight students.
- Volunteer a few jobs to practice your business skills and build a reputation. Use recommendations from these jobs in your future advertising. Sarah took senior pictures as a favor for a friend and received three other jobs from referrals.
- Launch your first advertising campaign. Try to use free advertising such as emails, Facebook posts and handing out fliers to friends and neighbors.
- Work your plan on a small scale. Start with one customer at first. Learn a lot from that experience and grow slowly.
- Evaluate, adjust and change. As you grow in experience, you may be able to charge more. You will probably need to create a payment policy. Sarah discovered that she needed to be paid up front and have a cancellation policy when she scheduled photo shoots.
- Pick a name and register it. Usually, you can use your own name, such as Cathy Smith's Babysitting Service, without needing a name registration. If you do want a business name, learn what your state or local government requires. This website is a good place to start: http://www.business.gov/register/business-name/dba.html
- Open a checking account. Accountants usually recommend a separate business checking account to keep from mixing personal and business expenses. A teenager can usually get by with one checking account, if you keep good records. Usually a parent must agree to be a co-signer on a checking account for minors.
- Read up on taxes. You’ll need to file your own tax return, may owe federal or state income tax, and may be subject to self-employment tax also. Self-employment tax is Social Security and Medicare taxes for self-employed people.
- Learn about customer service, marketing and record keeping. Become a student of business and seek to be continually learning more. Read books, take a business class, find a mentor and ask a lot of questions.
Carol Topp, CPA advises teenage business owners through her Micro Business for Teens book series. Carol’s day job is accountant to business owners, and she enjoys teaching teenagers to succeed beyond their dreams. Students appreciate how she shares what they need to know in clear and helpful lessons. Her website is MicroBusinessForTeens.com
Ponder
Even if it’s only for one minute, stop awhile today and ponder the wonder of God. “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)
Photo by Mark Reed Butterfield, used with permission.
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