Category:
Living the Faith
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…
Lazy
Picture this: you’re sitting at the kitchen table and need a paper towel from the roll on the counter. Rather than simply stand up and take the one step to reach it, you try to stretch from where you are. Why get up if you don’t have to? Only you can’t…quite…reach… So you scoot the…
Speeding
I have received two speeding tickets in my life. (According to Murphy’s Law, I suppose I should add the caveat “so far.”) The first one was well deserved. I was driving back from a conference in Connecticut to my apartment in western New York. I’d stopped to visit my parents and left way too late. …
Vacation
I gleaned a bit of wisdom recently from one of those “Take This Quiz” articles stamped in the midst of a check-out line tabloid. The quiz wanted me to guess when the greatest benefit of a vacation was realized. Before? During? Immediately after? Having recently returned from a vacation, I can tell you the answer…
Do It
I am a total Harry Potter fan. I have read every book (multiple times) and frequently find myself pondering one brilliantly penned scene or another. Recently, I found myself contemplating the complexity of a scene at the end of book three. A swarm of dementors are descending upon Harry and his friends, ready to deliver…
Lest We Forget
Not too long ago I read Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns. It was perhaps the most horrible book I have ever read. I highly recommend it. If you think that is a contradiction, it is not. The book sat on my bookshelf for several months before I raised the gumption to open it. I…
Planning
Here’s something I need to hear, so I’m going to tell you, too: Sometimes God has a different plan. My mother sometimes laments how her days often do not turn out the way she expected. “I can have my whole day planned,” she’ll say, “and it can turn out completely different. We’re just not in…
Adjust
What can one learn by pet sitting a friend’s dog for two weeks? An appreciation for one’s own dog, who is quiet and does not pee in the house, perhaps. But, I suspect the answer is supposed to be a bit deeper than that. One night, early on in the visit, while “Ricky” was sitting…
Simple
I was having one of those days – a whole string of them, actually – where it felt as though I spent every workday perched atop some amusement park ride called “The Scrambler.” Through sheer force of will, I repeatedly managed to eject myself at the end of the day, only to turn around and…
God is like Priceline, Part II
If you’re like me, you read last month’s article and felt there was a little something missing. What about those times when you don’t know what God is telling you to do? When you’re faced with a decision and you have no idea which way to go? How can you tell God, “Yes, I”ll book…
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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.