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The love continuum
“Let your thoughts be where your feet are and love direct your steps” is my life mantra. Love, compassion and gratitude flow from my heart to my head to direct my steps on a daily basis. I had an incredible massage the other day and as my body began to unblock, my...
reclaim starting
A return to Santorini, Greece where I reclaimed myself after 4 major surgeries, a rare disease and subsequent cancer diagnosis, along with a curative surgery that left me with another condition. From the Caldera to the waves of the Aegean Sea, I screamed as the wind...
That’s the way I fight
My watch reminds me to breathe, drink water, tracks my steps, and my fitness ranking. I can choose to compete with family, friends, my own personal best but one thing it can’t do, is measure the impact to my spirit when I'm shadow boxing. It doesn’t register the...
Celestial Country
Intention: Happiness Whether you whisper or scream your volume is swallowed by the majestic of the Grand Canyon. I watched shadows stretching against the etched walls of the cliff and seemingly embed to its design. A flood of happy filled my soul. I began to create a...
no bones about it
The central line pulled every time I turned my neck to look at my elevated blood pressure. Each piece of equipment connected to me displayed my vital signs and somehow, disconnected me from who I thought I was. It’s been said that “what wires together, fires...
inner landscape
It's been nearly a year since I've been able to place any emotion into word. They stick in my spirit, lodge in my brain and sometimes look like tears. As I process my progress, I've come to appreciate the new me. Falling in love with who I am now has been so hard. I...
Try it, you’ll like it!
“Try it, you’ll like it!” Whoever first uttered this phrase never had a plate of stinky cheese, olives and salami forced upon them in childhood, chased with a wash down of Coke from a glass bottle in some rite of passage and nod to my Italian heritage. I still feel...
Happiness makers
Intention: Shine bright It's been my hope through these 21 days of prayer guide to free your soul and create a spacious place for spiritual growth. I created a platform with my blog and social media to feel safe and loved. I opened my heart and shared my own journey...
A life of love
Intention: Forgiveness Sarah had a hard life-pregnant and married at fifteen. Divorced, then remarried, two more children, divorced again. Devastated when her father died-the only man who had shown her unconditional love. Sarah was very close to her two...
Prayers, hugs and a cup of tea
Intention: Show mercy In a wooden farmhouse, somewhere in rural Ohio, there once resided a palpable hope. Everyone entering my BEAUTIFUL sister in-law and brother-in-law's home felt it envelope them like a warm, familiar hug that squeezed out the hurts and pressed in...
Lettuce fast and pray
Intention: Harmony Isaiah 58:6 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?’ When I reach maximum density, I know that it’s time for fasting and...
So I do this thing
Intention: Compassion So, I do this thing. Every morning, I wake up and say, “Thank you, God for the breath in my body and the glory of this day!” I make my bed: Monday-Thursday and Friday- Sunday is the weekend, so no making bed. When I stay in this mode, I thrive...
Legacy Scaffolding
Intention: Cultivate relationships There’s this thing I do with biographies. I like to flip to the back pages of the book and see how they finished. Sort of like, how’d they do? Did they let life overcome them? To me, life is...
A mind at rest
Intention: Find rest in God Can I ask you something? How are you doing? If you did an emotional inventory, like a soul scan, how are you really doing? Okay, I’ll start. For 18 days I was locked alone in a room with a madwoman who shouted fear and strange...
Where praying is like breathing
Intention: Joy Have you ever watched someone lose the vision for their life? Like a tire that goes flat, it's not from a sudden burst but rather, a slow leak. There's so much about our world right now that ransacks our spirit, leaving interrupted dreams. Fear...
Fear impedes God’s love
Intention: Release fear, embrace love What you bring with you into 2021, starts with the thoughts you allow in your spirit today. It’s what you say about yourself to others and what you believe about yourself. If you could clock how fast your thoughts run to...
Agape and hugs
Intention: Agape My closing is always, Agape & Hugs, Kristianne ? I’ve spent the better part of my adult life doing just that. Agape is Jesus’ compassion manifested in my life. Living in God’s love despite human frailties and sin, especially my own. The most...
Everybody’s love smells different
Intention: Love Grace’s ringlet curls wrapped around her spangly bracelets as she leaned across our bubble gum tea party. She wiggled her index finger in the space between our faces. “C’mere, Mommy…real close and breathe big with me,” and we did as if together, we...
To the mountain!
Intention: Mercy I signed up on a whim for the vision board class at my yoga studio. As one of the oldest in the group, I used the most glitter glue. I noticed in my cutting and gluing frenzy that I had mostly words and few images. So I called my board, “A New...
Growing up or growing old?
Intention: Rest Purposeful rest, unthreatened by distractions creates well-being in my soul. There was a time for over 18 months that I was crippled with physical pain. It forced me to appreciate the value of rest but it was a process. Starting with, I didn't know how...
Are you happy at me?
Intention: Form a sacred routine My youngest daughter, Annelise didn’t just play dress up, she had her own fashion line and a princess dress was a part of her daily wardrobe. Annelise would twirl and dance in her clear, plastic high heels despite the heat buildup that...
My mornings are all booked
Intention: Prayer And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Philippians 4:8 The word meditate comes...
In a certain place
Intention: Cherish One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” John 11:1 Beth’s eight hour work day had dragged to ten. Sighing, she laid her meal...
Rise up
Intention: Strength For it is the Lord your God who goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to give you victory. Deuteronomy 20:4 (NRSV) When you're feeling defeated, God reaches down and whispers to your soul, "Rise up! I am fighting for you.” God's...
Rooted in God’s love
Intention: Serenity Warning here. If clowns scare you, then you need to skip to the next paragraph. Remember Bozo the Clown and the weighted punching bag? I was doing some online shopping and came across a review for the Bozo Bop Bag. It read, “DOES NOT HAVE...
Jesus in my slippers
Intention: Grace & Goodness Every day as my feet hit the ground I experience Jesus in my slippers. I decide what to carry to my waking world and who to show a lavish love. It’s then, I radiate the light of God’s love. When I choose service over selfish I become...
With my whole being
Intention: Praise Your prayers often reflect whatever you are going through. For 18 months, my prayers were associated with grief, loss, chronic pain, wounding and cancer. I completely forgot about praise. Every day there’s a virtual playground fight. Someone’s...
Soul Nourishment
Intention: Meditation Intention has several meanings such as a prayer but it's also defined as a process for the healing of incised wounds. Most of us carry wounds made long before a diagnosis, life shift or emotional struggle. It simply took the pain to press it to...
A heart set on pilgrimage
As I grew spiritually, I felt something missing in my prayer life. My church was doing a "Daniel Fast" for 21 days and so ever the spiritual enthusiast, I participated. My only real exposure to Biblical fasting was when Jesus was in the desert and after 40 days…He was...
partakers of our plenty
I think these words sum up for me what 2020 has brought. I may not have what I had in the past but the goodness of God satisfies my soul. I’ve learned to shelter in place physically and build a shelter for my soul.
In Her Lane
I’m not going to return to normal or even anything close to what it was before. Nor am I waiting until 2021 to “live again.” My best day is the one I am living right now. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the...
…grace upon grace
There’s this thing I do with biographies. I like to flip to the back pages and see how they finished. Sort of like, how’d they do? Did they let life overcome them? Beginning with the end in mind is the mark to which a Christian strives. They live their lives to be in...
Know that you are loved
Hot tears slid down the sides of my temples to rest on my yoga mat. The studio was dark and this was the part of my practice of final rest. “Know that you are loved, rest in peace.” The lyrics wove through my battered spirit and each word seemed to catch on a jagged...
Stay here
...And now I will send the Holy Spirit, just as my Father promised. But stay here in the city until the Holy Spirit comes and fills you with power from heaven.” Luke 24:29 There was fear, unrest, and the disciples were running scared when Jesus appeared to them,...
If I had known
“But some will come to me—those the Father has given me—and I will never, never reject them.” John 6:37 "You can never run again." Sure, my spine surgeon said it kindly and with soft eyes because I was crying so hard that I might have been blowing awkward bubbles...
Solid molecules of perfume
Words are art. A deliberate stringing of words becomes one of the highest forms of human expression when it gives a voice to our heart. Songs of my Soul is a collection of my prayers, musings and reflection. It's the beautiful stuff found in showing God's love and...
Awash in God’s Love
Every morning for years, I sit on my back patio and I’m treated to a symphony of birds, each with a distinct sound and yet they harmonize. A recent hip repair surgery forced me into an early self-isolation long before a stay at home mandate. I’ve become used to the...
Take 10 (there’s really 11)
Did you ever fall off a jungle gym as a kid and land flat on your back? I remember laying on a leaf covered playground staring blankly at a circle of faces looming over me. It wasn’t until I opened my mouth and gulped air, forcing it into my lungs that my body made...
Set on Pilgrimage
Three apples rolled aimlessly across the basket as I leaned into the grocery cart for more support. Halfway down the snacks aisle, I heard my name called and an acquaintance stopped me. “Is that you? What happened to you?