Everyone experiences disappointment from time to time. How we deal with it, particularly if it’s ongoing, can make or break us and our relationships. Disappointment comes in many shades and textures. It could be something minor like the AirBnB looking infinitely better online than it does in real life. Maybe we experience disappointment when we realize our co-workers don’t take the mission of our work or church as seriously as we do. There’s no shortage of reasons why we might feel disappointed.

Despite its commonality, disappointment looks different on each of us. When I’m in the throes of disappointment, my first response is to eddy around regret. (Why did I choose this AirBnB?) I somehow falsely believe that if I cycle back through the process, the fatal flaw in my logic will appear and I will then be able to avoid making the same mistake ever again. (FYI: this is ridiculous and a waste of time and energy.) My second response tends to be a sort of spine drooping, foot shuffling, mopey form of discouragement. I might spend an hour or a day in this space depending on the magnitude of my disappointment.

To read the rest of this article, click this link to The Sage Forum’s Substack page.

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Muscles take longer to recover from injury or overuse. Illnesses take longer to shake. Our joints and teeth begin to show signs of wear. Depression can become an unwanted companion. Solid sleep becomes evasive. It can sometimes feel that our calendars are overrun with probing, prodding, and scanning appointments.

We are not imagining these seismic shifts. Statistics support our experiences.

Women over fifty are much more likely to face colon and breast cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, and stroke. Despite the overwhelm that can result from our new reality, we are not without agency. There’s much we can—and much we shouldn’t—do.

As I write in Marriage in the Middle, “Unless we have a full blown health crisis, we may be lulled into thinking we can get away with sloppy or inconsistent self-care. The truth is, we can no longer afford to neglect our bodies.” So what does it look like to take care of ourselves in this time frame? The specifics will be unique for each of us but big picture, “self-care should mean creating life that’s enjoyable and sustainable for the long-haul.”

To read the remainder of this short article, please click this link to Substack/Sage Forum.

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Dorothy joins our host, Christopher J. Harris, for an incredibly warm and insightful discussion on marriage in general and then more specifically, marriages that are seasoned. This conversation will leave you with that sense that you just saw down with your best friend, a counselor/therapists, and a pastor all at the same time…because you did. You’ll smile, you’ll laugh, you may get a little misty-eyed, and you’ll want to take notes as well.

Click this link to listen.

You can find more information on my book here.

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After my husband, Christopher, and I teach together, people often approach us and say, “You two are so vulnerable!” Their feedback is infused with equal parts awe and trepidation. Living like an open book has specific drawbacks. Honesty is risky. We have frequently been misunderstood and/or judged. When we admit how and where we struggle, others can scurry to moral high ground and look down on us. Other friends—and some family members—have told us that they often feel intimidated by our candor.

Though the costs are tangible—and sometimes painful—we believe that in the long run, the benefits are worth the expense.

Our choice to live vulnerably means that if we’re in a small group meeting and the prompt is What were your highs and lows during Covid?, we’re not going to gloss over the challenges or hide the discouragement that we both felt. And if we’ve been invited to confess our sins, we’re not going to be vague or tidy up our confession. We’re going to name it and own it.

We don’t live vulnerably because we’re exhibitionists. To be honest, I’m a private person and prefer to keep my weaknesses and failures hidden. What Christopher and I have discovered in the context of our own marriage, however, and in our nearly 30 years of doing pastoral care, is that if we want to grow, we have to have both feet in reality. We can’t live in denial. Denial encourages us to spackle over our fault lines and create façades that might look pretty but won’t hold up when the inevitable storms of life hit.

To read this entire article, please head over to Redbud Writers’ Guild.

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I’ve worked as a photographer for almost forty years. Perhaps more than any other variable, light affects the quality of an image. Too much light and the image will be blown out and flat. Too little and details get lost. Understanding how to work with the light often differentiates a novice photographer from an expert. When I’m out on assignment, I’m constantly trying to determine the best time of day to shoot and always moving toward the light.

Throughout Scripture, God is frequently compared to or described as light. The prophet Isaiah referred to God as “the light of Israel.” (Isaiah 10:17) David understood God’s word as “a light for my path.” (Psalm 119:105) And as recorded in John’s gospel, Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.” (John 8:12)

It seems rather obvious then that we should endeavor to be heliotropic—always orienting ourselves toward God, who is the source of all light.

To read this short article, please head over to Elisa Morgan’s site.

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Because I work as a photographer and writer, people often compare their lives to mine and say something along the lines of “You’re so lucky. I’m just not that creative.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

As men and women made in God’s image, all of us are inherently creative.

This is a good thing because the ability to imagine and create is essential in every phase and every aspect of life. It will help us to figure out how to remodel the bathroom on a budget and what to feed our families night after night. Imagination and creativity are equally important in the relational realm. Resolving conflicts between co-workers (or your own children), establishing boundaries with in-laws, or breaking through to something new with your spouse all depend upon our ability to look beyond the problem and come up with a solution. Once we see creativity through this larger frame, we can then rely on it to help us navigate any type of relational challenge.

A Gift for Everyone

God has chosen to endow all of us with the ability to create because He’s a good God and because He knew we would need this faculty. As such, engaging our imaginations and living creatively should not be seen as child’s play or as a privilege for select vocations such as a sculptor or musician. To think along these lines is to deny our heritage. Poet Luci Shaw asserts, “We who believe we bear God’s image must realize that the image includes the capacity to imagine and create, because God is himself an imaginative Creator.” In fact, God is the ultimate creator. He came up with the idea for snow, giant sequoias, watermelons, rainbows, hummingbirds, dolphins, and the particulars of procreation.

You may not write books or take photographs, but you have the capacity to bring order, solve problems, and make beautiful things—which is what being creative is all about.

To read the remainder of this post, please click this link to Alison Cook‘s site. And please subscribe to her newsletter. She offers terrific content!

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When doubt finds its way into our prayer life, we may assume we simply need to muster more faith. Or we may imagine that to overcome doubt, we need to acquire more knowledge. But the reality is we can’t fabricate faith and we will never fully comprehend God, no matter how much Scripture we memorize, how many seminary degrees we earn, or how many hours we pray. As Paul reminded the Corinthians, we see through a glass darkly (1 Cor. 13:12). We are limited creatures stuck in Earth time without the capacity to fully understand our own narrative, let alone God’s mysterious purposes or the Enemy’s nefarious schemes.

To some extent, our experience of doubt depends on how we perceive it. If we understand it to be, as poet Alfred Lord Tennyson jested, “Devil-born” or akin to an invader that breaches our defenses in order to deconstruct our faith, then doubt is to be avoided or denied at all costs. But that’s not the only vantage point.

“I think doubt and faith are not opposites,” says New Testament scholar Scot McKnight. “Doubt is often inherent to faith.” If we explore our doubt and trace it back to its source, it may expose our own false constructs about God or our feeble attempts to control him. In this way, doubt can actually propel us toward God in humility and deepen our relationship with him by inching our prayers toward greater honesty and intimacy.

To read the remainder of this article, please click this link to Christianity Today. (And if it fails to work, please LMK!)

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This forty-five minute interview with author and professor James Bryan Smith at The Apprentice Institute is one of my favorite podcasts. James said that, “Marriage in the Middle hit all the right notes” for him. He asks great questions and we took a deep dive! Give this a listen and share with any of your friends who might be interested.

Click this link to the Things Above podcast.

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What does it look like to cultivate healthy friendships in midlife and beyond and is it really worth the effort?

When most of us were growing up, friendship were more narrowly defined. Our extended family likely lived within a one-day drive. Friendship circles were composed of classmates, neighbors, and cousins. In today’s hyperconnected world, things have changed—particularly for those of us living in metropolitan areas.

According to Facebook, I have 1,642 “friends.” I’ve only met about one quarter of them face-to-face. It’s virtually impossible to manage the ever-expanding relational circles without engaging in a form of social Darwinism. To bring some semblance of order, we categorize relationships into hierarchies based on any number of criteria such as close friend versus mere acquaintance, religious beliefs, membership in common organizations, or shared interests such as kombucha brewers with a sense of humor. (I did not make that up.)

This kind of rating system didn’t exist when friendships depended on proximity or blood ties. Back then, we worked harder to maintain friendships because our options were limited. Today, our seemingly limitless options coupled with the ease of unfriending encourage us to function as if friends are expendable, which of course isn’t true.

We also spend increasing amounts of time forming and nurturing relationships online. These points of connection can be meaningful and sometimes develop into rich friendships. But the hours spent in front of a screen also render us unavailable to the neighbor across the street—or the spouse living under the same roof.

To read the remainder of this excerpt from Marriage in the Middle, click this link to The Perennial Generation.

You can also read more on this topic in chapter ten from Marriage in the Middle.

Photo by Dario Vanezuela/Unsplash

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Even though we live in a world where it’s unimaginable to go through a single day without being barraged by hypersexualized imagery, it’s incredibly countercultural to talk about our bodies and our sexuality in an honest, respectful fashion—even as adults.

This is not a new problem. Nor is it only a church problem. Both religious and secular culture have largely failed to offer a healthy, balanced perspective of sexuality. Many of us were most likely inculcated by one of two diametrically opposed philosophies regarding sex: the anything goes, no-rules-apply approach or the highly repressive everything-is-forbidden approach of the extreme abstinence movement. Neither of these ideologies accurately captures God’s intent.

Regardless of whether we were raised in the extreme abstinence movement, permissive secular culture, or some place in between, we all have to sift through layers of cultural conditioning and misguided teaching to determine God’s intent for our sexuality. This is true even if we’ve been married for decades.

Many Christian women often find themselves in a double bind. Not only are we seemingly responsible for keeping our husbands sexually satisfied, but we’re also apparently responsible for mankind’s sexual sobriety. Soon after the late Rev. Billy Graham began his public ministry, he, along with several of his trusted friends, decided to safeguard his ministry by implementing several rules, one of which stated that they would not meet individually with a woman unless a third party was present. Known as the “Billy Graham rule,” this has become standard practice for many male Christian leaders.

Fidelity should be a nonnegotiable component of marriage and men are wise to understand their vulnerabilities.

To read the remainder of this post, please click this link to Sheila Wray Gregoire’s site. You might also want to grab a copy of her new book, The Great Sex Rescue.

You can read more on this topic in my second book, Marriage in the Middle.

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Peonies never last long enough. Because of New England’s super hot weather this week, they will bloom and fade within a few days.

All of these images were shot of one bush (in our neighbors’ yard) with my Canon DSLR and 100 mm macro lens. I did not enhance the colors.

I’m so grateful for this gorgeous world of ours.

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