Featured Short Story

Why is it so hard to receive a compliment and just say thank you? Like many women when someone compliments me, I often feel the need to explain or tell them where I got whatever it is they are complimenting me on.

Recently, while at the doctor's office I complimented a young technician on her hair. "You have beautiful hair," I said. She responded, "It is hair extensions." I looked for awhile and couldn't see any evidence of added hair so I said, "Wow, I can't see that. It all looks like your hair."

She stopped what she was doin...

Have you ever been tempted to take a ride in one of the guided horse carriages?  It seems so romantic and peaceful trotting through the city or a quiet park.

I think about how difficult it would be for a horse, taken from a pasture, to be placed in a noisy city to be told where they should go. That is why the owners use blinder

Blinders are leather flaps on the bridle that keeps the horse from seeing to the sides. It helps the animal to focus and stay on course.

Blinders were used on farm horses and mules to pull plows o...

There was a reason why suggesting a clambake for Thanksgiving in place of the traditional turkey and dressing did not go over very well with our children. I think it brought back memories of another Thanksgiving meal that caught them off guard.

Our three children were elementary school age when we spent our first Thanksgiving with their grandparents in Missouri. They lived in a big brick house surrounded by 10 acres of rocky land on a rural road at the foothills of the Ozark Mountains.

My father-in-law had two ponds sto...

The subject was drugs. My son was telling me he thought his children would receive good information about drugs in their schools, but it was still the parent's responsibility to talk about it at home.

I agreed with him, and reminded him that we did the same thing for him and his brother and sister. "I know, Mom," he said carefully. "But you were too late.”

Trying not to show how dumbfounded I was, I asked him what exactly he meant. "By the time you asked me about drugs, Mom, I had already tried them," he said as gently as...

I grew up on a farm. At the end of each summer or harvest year, my dad set fire to the fields to make ready for seeding the following spring. My brothers and I helped him by containing the fire in our corner of the fields. We didn’t have vast fields, but this was a low-cost alternative to tilling in the previous year’s crops, and my dad also believed it killed unwanted insects.

Our job was to stand in our designated section of the field with a large wet cloth or a wet broom and make sure the fire did not go beyond our corn...

It was the last 45 seconds of the game, and the basketball had been pushed into her hands. For a second, she stood there numb, bouncing the ball on the polished hardwood floor. The seconds ticked by until she was jerked into action by the shouting on the sideline. “Throw it, throw the ball!”

A tall guard loomed in front of her face. She moved to her right side, glanced at the round metal ring with the basket below, closed her eyes, and threw the ball toward the goal as hard as she could.

Relieved that the discarded ...

The little girl ran from one side of the waiting room to the other, almost tripping the adult walking by. Her mother tried to stop her, but the three-year-old ran out of her reach. When she finally got her back to her seat, she stood up and began jumping up and down dangerously close to the edge of the chair.

The frantic mother told the child to sit down or she would not get a treat when they left. It didn't work. When all other negotiations failed, the mother seemed to have had enough. She said to the child with exasperation; “...

The first day of college was pretty much the same as the first day of grammar school in our family. There was anxiety, fear of the unknown, tears and a slight longing to retreat back into that comfortable place at home called the nest.

It is called separation anxiety. We understand it completely when our children cling to us the first time we are separated from them.

But what do we call it when it happens to the parents? It is labeled the “empty nest” syndrome. I experienced symptoms with each child as we packed up ...

“Blogging is so much more than writing,” the woman told me when I introduced myself as a writer at the Mediavine conference I recently attended. Her words were a meer peek into what I was going to learn in the next three days.

I have been a professional freelance writer for 30 years. I am a retired nurse and health educator, so I have written for many health venues, but, as a Christian writer and speaker, my passion is to write stories that educate and encourage my readers.

The difference between writers and...

I hated to start our evening with nagging, but when our daughter drove up in front of the restaurant, I noticed she wasn't wearing her seat belt. “Sweetheart, you should wear your seat belt,” I said. “Sure mom,” she laughed.

While we were having dinner, like most moms, I felt compelled to give my usual lecture about the danger of not wearing seat belts.

When we started to leave it was raining, and I felt anxious about her driving back to her college dorm on the wet, winding roads of East Tennessee. Even ...

The little town where we lived outside of Augusta, Georgia was very small.  There was an elementary school, a flower shop, a bank, a minute market and a family owned restaurant and, of course, many churches. We knew just about everyone in the community, and everyone knew our youngest son.

He was a friendly child, with whitish, blonde hair, who was always zipping around the neighborhood on his red bicycle. First thing every morning during the summer he would get dressed and off he would go for his morning ride. In his travels he often ...

All the students in the room wore full aprons to protect their clothing. They needed to because they were a group of wiggly 2 and 3-year-olds in a cooking class. My daughter scheduled the class at the local community center for my granddaughter and me when she knew I was coming to help her during the arrival of their second child.

“You’ll love it, mom,” she said. “You and Clare can have some fun together and make cookies.”

Eight little squirming bodies stood on chairs around two long tables with se...