From Me to You

I’m trying to get back in the habit of exercise, and found myself thinking a lot about comparisons while on the stationary bike today. You know how when you’re on a treadmill or some other machine, you can choose different programs to run? The machine makes the incline steeper or the pace faster for certain intervals of time. The changing difficulty levels are often represented by vertical bars on the machine’s screen. As I looked down the row of machines today, some people were running fast, others were sweating hard and pushing the pedals slowly. How could I tell who was working the hardest? I realized that I couldn’t! Because the person who seems to be flying by might have zero incline, while the person barely moving might be climbing steep terrain. The person who is only walking might have already been through an intense workout and is finally doing a much-needed cool-down interval. In a similar way, we don’t know what experiences other people ar...

I was walking through an aquarium gift store when an adorable picture book caught my eye. It was called "With Your Paw in Mine" by Jane Chapman. What I didn't realize at the time was that this book would end up communicating a much-needed message of love during a tumultuous time in my life. You see, I've been pretty sick. I started off 2019 in the hospital, and I feel like I haven't had too many healthy days since then. And even if you haven't gone through a prolonged period of illness yourself, I'm sure you can imagine that this season has been an emotional trial as well as a physical one. It's hard to stay positive and interact well with others when all you really want to do is sleep. Or at least it is for me. :) And because of that, it has become really easy for me to get down on myself. Some of my former measurements of success aren't things I can currently do well. It was after a particularly stormy month recently that family members came...