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Emotional Trust
Sometimes I wonder: If I have faith in God, why do I still feel afraid or angry or overwhelmed… or all three? Shouldn’t faith mitigate all these negative emotions? My impulse is to think of such emotions as bad, as though my faith must be weak if I am scared or sad. But when I look…
Mystery Rental
Don’t you hate it when you’re walking across a giant parking lot and suddenly realize you have no idea what your rental car looks like? Or does that just happen to me? Ironically enough, I was just listening to a story on the radio about the world memory champion who secured his second straight title…
God’s Letter to Me
I wrote a similar idea on the new resources page, but I keep thinking about it. And thinking for me is one step short of writing. Which brings me here. (Lucky you.) One of the habits I try to uphold is to read something Christian every night before I go to bed: the Bible, a devotional, an…
Cracking, Part II
Click to read Part I. It paints an interesting word picture to think of ourselves as shells of dust with the Spirit of God shining through the cracks. But what does this actually mean? What does this look like in the tangible? As I think about this image, I think about Paul, who suffered a…
Rotten Bananas
My apartment currently smells like bananas. This is because I have a banana languishing on my counter encased in an increasingly brown skin. It has passed the point where I actually want to eat it, but it is not quite so far gone as to be demoted to the compost bin. What it really needs…
Cracking, Part I
Have you ever had one of those days where you think: “If one more thing goes wrong, I am going to crack!!” As in, “The weight of this stressful old world is weighing me down so badly that I can literally feel myself starting to crack up and fall apart! Arrggghhh!” I certainly have. Sometimes…
Welcome, Friends!
Here’s a quick snippet about how this blog started. I began writing monthly articles for my church newsletter in December 2009. (Wow, time flies.) The archive of these articles appears below this post. Even though they all say they were posted in March 2012, they were actually written over a two year period. This is…
I Am
Sometimes I have trouble believing in God. It can happen suddenly, in one of those horrendous moments that leave me questioning: if God is in control of everything, then why did he let this happen? If he is a loving and personal God, then how could he let this happen? But more often than not,…
Associations
Every time I eat a banana, I think of my dog. This isn’t quite as strange as it sounds, really. My dog loves bananas, and I always give her the bottom tip when I’m eating one. This habit formed so automatically that I don’t even realize I am doing it until I am someplace without…
Obedience
I recently volunteered at a canine obedience trial. Some dogs and handlers make it look so easy! They move around the ring at the judge’s command, the dog’s head never moving more than an inch from the handler’s side. And yet, the biggest test of obedience often comes not during the intricate heelwork, but during…
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Meet Janet!
Janet Beagle, PhD is the founder of The Mustard Patch. She divides her time between the Midwest and New England, and if she’s not writing, she’s probably out hiking with her 2-and 4-footed friends.