Grateful for All of Our Spring Chaos

The past few weeks have been spring chaos around our house. Don’t worry. There were no fires or life threatening emergencies. Alan was out of town for two weeks. He traveled all over the place and had his own cool adventures, to include meeting a group of Rosie Riveters from World War II and ringing the gong at the European stock exchange, Euronext. But this chaos isn’t about him. It’s about me over here, eighteen years into parenting, still struggling like a fly in a spiderweb. Last week, I was wriggling all over the place. Things kept happening the past […]

10 Encouraging Bible Verses for When You Need a Pick-Me-Up

Do you ever feel knocked down and in need of encouragement? Maybe you need a few encouraging Bible verses to get you through the day? You open your Bible hoping to find just the right motivating words to help you go on, but you aren’t sure where to look exactly. I have a few I’ve collected over the years I’d like to share with you today. When my husband Alan went to Iraq the second time, I was left with a two-year-old and a one-year-old boy to bring up on my own for fifteen months. And by the way, I’m […]

Our Beloved Pastor Kevin Corey

“Did you have a good day at church?” I asked my twelve-year-old son on our way home, about a year ago. “Yes, I did. I always do. Pastor Corey is the best children’s minister ever. And I would know because I have had a lot of them!” He’s right. Our moving all over the country every couple of years means Daniel has had several children’s pastors. Daniel went on to talk about what makes Pastor Corey great. He is so funny, and he tells the Bible stories well, so everyone listens and understands. He was kind and fun to the […]

What we can learn from Jill Duggar’s new book, Counting the Cost

Have you seen the media’s many shock headlines about Jill Duggar’s new tell-all book? I was tracking the release of Counting the Cost for several months before it came out. This was one I knew I had to read! (If you do buy it, use one of my Amazon links. I am an Amazon affiliate and collect small advertising fees). Back in the heyday of “19 Kids and Counting,” I was a big fan of the Duggar family as a whole. I read Michelle’s book, watched the show, and wrote articles about what I learned from them. Despite the family’s […]

The Time Saving Mom Book is A Useful Resource

The Time Saving Mom Book Review This week I purchased the brand new book, The Time Saving Mom, by New York Times bestselling author Crystal Paine. I bought this book because it fits my interests and the niche of this blog perfectly. One of my favorite things to do is read about how to make my life better. I like to read a million tips and then maybe only actually do two of them. Ha! Do you do that? I ordered the hardback version from Amazon and carried it around the house with me. Me carrying this book around was […]

Deborah Smith was One of Our Greatest Answered Prayers.

You might be thinking, “Well, who is Deborah Smith?” Where to even begin? Deborah Smith was one of the greatest ladies I have ever met. She was definitely one of the wisest people I have ever known in real life. In fact, I cannot think of anyone wiser. I always thought of Deborah as a godly mentor who I aspired to be more like. Deborah blessed our entire family’s life. She changed us for the better. And she passed away this past week from a very aggressive cancer. Deborah could not have been older than her fifties either, so she […]

Getting My Act Together’s Top 10 Posts of 2022

2022 was the first year for this blog, Getting My Act Together, and these were my most successful posts. I started out 2022 with high hopes of writing every single week, and that went well for January-March or so. Ha! And then the move happened. By move I mean our real life move, not just moving from storiesofourboys.com. Moving in real life was a much bigger inconvenience, you know? It was like, well, so much for “getting my act together” this year… Once the move started, it was fairly impossible to keep up with writing of any kind. Then the […]

7 Encouraging Bible Verses for Women to Make Your Day Better

These are Bible verses, and a few whole Bible stories, that I find especially encouraging, as a woman. I hope you will too. Some of these are specific to women, and some of them are helpful for everyone. Being a woman can be an emotional roller coaster, it seems like all the time. When life is extra challenging, I also write some of these verses and others on post-it notes and stick them all over my house so I can get the encouragement I need just to carry on and keep trying. What I love about these particular encouraging Bible […]

Good Reasons Not to Fret Over all the World’s Problems

This article is the second part of my series on Handling Stress. As I mentioned in my last post, Psalm 37 has always been a huge inspiration to me when I am going through a hard time. The very first two verses of Psalm 37 remind us not to fret because of the evil we see in the world. Evildoers will soon fade like the grass. All these problems and people are temporary. Life on earth is temporary. I feel like this is God telling us to chill and to stop freaking out. This is funny to me because honestly […]

5 Reasons to Not Take Yourself so Seriously

Today I realized something important. I have been taking myself too seriously. Do you ever do that? Have you ever been in the middle of a personal crisis and suddenly realized, “Wait a minute. I need to chill.” Life does not have to be a serious, sad thing. Instead, let life be what you want it to be. Yes, we have had a hard summer, but I have to remember that it is also still funny. This week lots of funny things happened, and I did not laugh at any of them! Have you ever had a phase like that? […]