Author: The Shepherd's Staff

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Being Sandwiched
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Being Sandwiched

Three Short Insights of How to Stay Emotionally Healthy in the Craziness of Caring for Aging Parents According to Wikipedia, The Sandwich generation is “the generation of people who care for their aging parents while supporting their own children. According to the Pew Research Center, just over 1 of every 8 Americans aged 40 to...

Trying to Understand
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Trying to Understand

Marriage may be the most infuriating, brilliant, amazing, and humbling of creations. The Apostle Paul actually describes it as a “profound mystery” in Ephesians, which is probably the best description for it. There are more books, seminars, Sunday School topics, sermons, and research about marriage than almost anything else, and yet most of us are...

awake
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awake

One of my favorite vacation destinations is the beach. I love essentially everything about it: The ocean, with it’s waves rhythmic and crashing; the sounds of the sea soothingly breathing in and out. I love getting in the water, surrendering to the tide’s calm rocking, feeling cleansed and rejuvenated. My favorite thing to do is...

Great Betrayals
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Great Betrayals

How do you put the pieces of your story back together after finding out about a great betrayal? How do you reclaim a past when you find out it was seemingly built around a longstanding lie? In her article ‘Great Betrayals’, Anna Fels explores how ‘robbing someone of his or her story’ through a longstanding...

What You Don’t Say
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What You Don’t Say

You’ve probably heard the story about old man Floyd, a widower, who lived alone in a ramshackle house down by the river. Floyd was a man of great faith who seemed content regardless of circumstances. Anyone in town could tell you that when times were tough Floyd would just smile and say, “the Lord will provide.” And, it...

Got Story?
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Got Story?

Just so you know from the outset, these words have no magic potion, no 30-day money-back guarantee, and not any earth-shaking information. In fact, this is a major “not rocket science” collection of words. This is so simple you can do it with your eyes closed. You can do it in the car. You can...

No Neutral Relating
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No Neutral Relating

A former boss/mentor/fatherly-friend once told me ‘You can’t not lead; the fact is you’re always leading, it’s just a matter of how well or poorly you’re doing it.’  This phrase has been stuck in my head for years now, and always seems to find new areas to lay hold of.  Lately, this saying has modified...

Oh, Good Grief!
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Oh, Good Grief!

Oh, Good Grief! “To love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.”  –C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves Have you ever lost something? Or someone?  I don’t mean like losing your keys, or getting separated from your mother in the department store… I mean truly losing...

Savor the Moment
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Savor the Moment

The rugged canyon at Laity Lodge, deep in the Hill Country of Texas, illustrates that even the hardest surfaces can be worn down over time. So can we call it the “water wearing away rock” phenomenon. I am referring to hard circumstances in our lives that go on and on.  Some of them, perhaps all...