For quite a while now I have been of the mindset that a good part of mental health is embracing the flaws, the nicked corners, and the pockets of rust that reside in the darkish regions of the psyche--honestly just because I, like other inhabitants of this world, have learned

Soft sobs emanated from my daughter's room this rainy morning. Her beloved Beta lay on his side at the bottom of the tank. We knew he was old. We knew he wasn't well. So we were "prepared," like our culture says we should be...like expecting a loss would somehow make it better.

Back, long ago, in what seems like another dimension of time, I was a college freshman, sitting in a single person desk, in an old cement-block kind of building, trying to catch the eye of the beautiful boy sitting in my row, and pretending that I understood what my philosophy

A couple of days ago as I was getting everyone out the door, and yes, of course we were late... I stepped up my neurotic-pressured-panicked-oh-my-god-the-world- is-going-to-end-if-we-don't-get-out-the-door-at-7:20 thing. And after a few minutes of infusing the atmosphere with my freak-out&

Credit scores, housing prices, size zero jeans, 21 point evaluations, numbers on a scale, or in a bank account, all these things  seem to define what it means to be human. Your stats, if you are an athlete, SAT scores, if you are a young college hopeful, the dollar amount

I was raised like a lot of church-going-kids to be obedient to my parents. It seemed like I got a lot of the children-obey-your-parents thing and very little of the command to obey God and not man. Never did I read or hear what author Oswald Chambers cautioned against...that is,

Scrolling through my emails, I came across this response to my "About" page:  R U Still Sad? It was from someone I didn't know, but this strangely personal yet impersonal text, got me thinking--but my first response was a kind of defensiveness. Doesn't this person get the message in my

I hate to have my visual field cluttered. I adore neatness.

I longingly look at Simple magazine's fresh, bright, tidy, well-lit photos of stacks of multicolored sweaters. I relish the sharp images of clean drawers with neat little open-topped boxes holding a bevy of push-pins, paper clips,/