DANNA'S COUNTDOWN TO 70 - LESSONS LEARNED ON THE ROAD OF LIFE God never wastes our pain. He teaches – restores – redeems and even sometimes makes us laugh. QUESTION: How has God redeemed your pain? Romans 8:38 says: “All things work together for good for those who love God, for those called according to his purpose.” I both love and hate this verse. It depends upon the context. It can sometimes feel like a rote response to someone’s pain as if it is an immediate panacea for current troubles. One of the first times [...]

MY LIFE IN 3 MINUTES  California born in 1952. Yep, do the math, I’m over sixty, but not blue! Awesome family – my dad and mom. Married 66 years! They’re the BOMB! Like most teen girls who look in the mirror; being fat and ugly was my biggest fear. Diets – Pills – I was in a downward spiral; and then my bulimia went viral.   Bingeing & purging five times a day; my body was ravaged in numerous ways. Hid my secret for 16 years until panic attacks exposed all of my fears. Losing [...]

Are these cut off jeans too young for a woman approaching seventy? Yeah, I know. That’s a pretty superficial question. But let’s be real, at my age, I find myself asking a lot of both deep and surface questions. I’ve faced off several milestone birthdays (40, 50, 60), but my upcoming 70 is somewhat sobering. I mean, really? I was just 40. And then, I blinked. Whoosh. Since I turned sixty, I’ve been increasingly mindful of how fast my life on this planet is speeding by and wondering what kind of legacy (i.e. meaningful and eternal [...]

De-Cluttering Your Quiet Time Confessions of a Semi-Recovered Type-A AS A SEMI-RECOVERED TYPE A – I struggle with sitting quietly with God some days. My endless To-Do List seems to be taunting me from my notebook across the table. I feel like this woman in the picture with Post-It Notes plastered all over my body reminding me of all the things I think I need to accomplish today. Why can’t I simply BE STILL and know that He is God without my mind constantly jumping ahead to the rest of my day? As I wrestled to stay in [...]

No Control When Your Steering Wheel Falls Off on the Freeway of Life Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”  James 4:13-15 Rushing out of the [...]

A Rose for You My Story of Rejection & Reconciliation The attractive blonde applied the finishing touches to her makeup as she prepared to meet the man of her dreams. She’d been living many women’s ultimate fantasy – going on extravagant dates with a dashing, successful bachelor for the past several weeks.  She was also living their greatest romantic nightmare – sharing him with twenty-four other women.  And that is how season one of ABC’s “The Bachelor” show hit the airwaves in 2002 as the “reality television” craze gained unstoppable momentum. [...]