Starting a new school in a new land is harder than I anticipated, but I felt like day 2 actually went very well for all the boys.

School started back yesterday. 

This was an exciting event that I’d finished in high gloss and framed in my mind as a victorious day ushering in a new era for me.

Without a single pre-schooler following me around I will have a spotless house, serve gourmet dinners, volunteer at their school, and run wild and free through grassy meadows.

Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

High expectations. I love to do that to myself.

Three years ago, my heart began to give me trouble, so I saw a cardiologist, and she told me not to exercise until we’d figured out what was going on with my heart.

We’ve never fully figured out what is causing my v-tach episodes, but they gave me back my freedom to exercise. Phew!

That lasted for about 6 months, and then my general practitioner took away my exercise again. “Only exercise in water. Otherwise, your joints are going to get worse and worse.”

Limitations. I hate them. Who doesn’t?

Anyway, am I not too young for such physical limitations and too old to have silly, unrealistic expectations?

For two years, I did not exercise. Occasionally, I’d rebel, suffer the pain of it, and reform. Meanwhile, my weight packed on at lightning speed.

I’ve come to see myself as this overweight, tired lady with a ticking-time-bomb heart and deflated dreams.

Lovely, eh? That’s disgruntled, disappointed, low self-esteem at its best.

But this hope of having a whole 6.5 hours/day to accomplish things alone drove me.

“I can lose the weight.”

“I can walk so much and do so many weight-bearing exercises (with small weights) that I can’t possibly mess it up with chocolate chip cookies.”

“Alan will love how clean the house is, and he will be impressed with me.”

“My blog will thrive again because I will have so much time to pour into it.”

“The sky’s the limit! I can do anything I want!”

“I’ll finally go get that MRI I was supposed to get a month ago and show the cardiologist how good my heart is doing.”

Some of these thoughts are healthy, I think. You gotta have drive to get through life, ya know?

And yet, you know what is inevitable with hopes of this sort? Disappointment. Problems. Unmet expectations.

Back to school day one wasn’t even over before Daniel developed strep throat. So guess who isn’t at home slaying all these accomplishments today? Me.

Daniel said, “No, I just want to sit in here with you, on the sofa.”

For 5 hours, I basically just sat with Daniel and cuddled on the couch. We watched Ninjago and Peter Rabbit and looked at old family photos of vacations at Legoland and the beach.

I still enjoyed it, but normally I would’ve cherished it so much more because I wouldn’t have had all these unmet goals in my head.

So no, today I did not impress my husband or anyone else for that matter. I have no idea what we will be eating for dinner. I actually fell asleep in Daniel’s bed around 1pm and woke up to see a giant block tower with farm fences built beside the bed and Daniel downstairs playing the x-box.

If I don’t get strep throat myself, it’s a miracle. Plus, I’m playing chauffeur tonight, which I rather despise, so I’m dreading that.

But God knew this all along, didn’t he? He knew my freedom would have a brief interlude. He knew I’d make grand plans that would fill me with disappointment when they came crashing down in front of me.

It’s actually serving as a good reminder to me, though it doesn’t feel like anything “good,” because I so desperately wanted to be wonderfully productive this week.

The thing is life isn’t about accomplishments, exercise, to do lists, or gourmet meals. Life is about love and people. That’s what life is about.

Yes, you heard it. I am DEFINING life right here on my little, low-traffic blog!!  And I dare you to argue with me. Ha! Because this time I’m right. (Maybe just this once, okay?)

Life is about love and people, so when you look at it this way, perhaps I am a smashing, unexpectedly amazing success after all because that is exactly what this day was about. Love and Daniel, and he is a person.

Just look at your life through that lens when it feels like you don’t have an accomplishment to your name. What’s success anyway, if it isn’t about love?

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.    1 Corinthians 13: 1-3

You might think, “No, April. Love and God.”

Well, yes, but if you love God then you must love people. You SHOULD love God most of all, but you should display that by loving his people. How can any of us love God, who we can’t see, if we don’t love people, who are right in front of us?

After all that’s what the Bible teaches:

Thus I am reminded to be content, no more like empowered, to show love and maybe only achieve 1 or 2 things from my list, or maybe none at all. I can work on this list any day at all, but Daniel needs me TODAY.

I hope you’re having a good day too, loving God and people. I’ll bet you’re way more of a smashing success than you think you are!

The post Disappointments and Limitations: Starting a New School in a New State appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

We lived in D.C. (both inside and outside the Beltway) for 5 years, and during that time we always had at least 2 preschoolers, sometimes 3. If it wasn’t at the ‘Space Museum’ or the ‘Dinosaur Museum’, we couldn’t stay long. Art museums were terrifying to even attempt with them, so like most parents, we just didn’t.

One year I sent the boys to stay with their grandparents for a week, and I had the rare opportunity to wander the District alone. It was a BLAST!! I adored every minute of it.

That was the year I walked into a genealogy conference at the National Archives and became hooked. It was also the year that I discovered the under appreciated jewel that is the Smithsonian art galleries. My favorites were the National Gallery of Art, located on the Mall, and the National Portraiture Gallery, located closer to Chinatown.

While browsing through the National Gallery, I came across Thomas Cole’s Voyage of Life Series. I was frozen to the spot, studying each individual painting. It’s a series of 4 enormous canvases, packed full of meaning and inspiration.

When we went back to D.C. this summer, Alan photographed all 4 of them for me to share on my blog, and I got to explain them all to the boys and their friends.

Do you know what tells the story of life, both present and past fathoms better than any museum full of relics??

Our art!!! I felt far more in touch with American history at the American Art and Portraiture Gallery than I ever did at the American History Museum. It’s a genuinely moving experience. I highly encourage you to visit an art gallery of this caliber if you ever get a chance!

The Voyage of Life, painted by Thomas Cole, located in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Beginning of Life 

In this first painting, the baby is arriving to earth, escorted by his guardian angel. Heaven is dark and unimportant to him, but the earth is in full bloom, filled with endless possibilities. The cave behind him shelters him from harm.

Me, explaining the paintings

Youth

I love this one. Youth on the river of life…lovely and green with a brilliant castle in the sky. Life is a grand adventure.

Manhood…..life’s not so easy anymore..

This man is not in his 20s anymore. The river of life has gotten rocky, and there are dangerous rapids and rain all around. His focus turns upward as he prays for help.

Old Age

Now he is an old man. Things of this world have grown dark and no longer hold their appeal. He is headed towards Heaven. It is the light at the end! The plaque beside the painting explains more:

Next time you tour D.C., don’t skip the National Gallery of Art. There are actually 2 original sets of this series, as Cole painted TWO. The other one is kept in New York.

This series has my heart!! I cannot fully explain it. I hope you enjoy it too.

The post The Voyage of Life: My Favorite Art Works in D.C. appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Caleb drew it. We all colored it. This is a tradition that we enjoy.

Wow! What an election year, eh? Alan got to be in Washington, D.C. for election night, but it was not just me and the boys here. Nana came over too! We had an “election party”, which is basically where we feed the boys Oreos and let them fill out the electoral map with red and blue markers as the results come in. Of course, most of it had to wait until the morning.

I always stay up as late as I possibly can to watch the results. I only made it until midnight this year. Parenting takes it out of you. Doesn’t it?

The whole election thing got me thinking about choices.

Choices, choices, choices.

They are constant aren’t they? So many decisions all the time. Some of them harder than others. We’ve all made our presidential choice. Check. Phew! Done. But there are so many choices left to make.

Today I had several messages on my phone to answer. I had house cleaning that I’ve been neglecting (as usual, because bleh–house cleaning). I had this absurd need to watch news anchors discuss the election with the experts. Then there was John David, wanting to be taken outside. I had a blog that needed updating. And I have growing boys that need me. Every minute that I spend doing or not doing anything is a choice that I make that says something about my priorities.

I try to always start my day out with God’s Word and prayer because when you put first things first, everything else should fall into place.

“Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”   Matthew 6:33

I loved this quote from Beth Moore:

“You may have many different things that you want to do, but they may not have anything to do with what you want your life to be about.”

I wrote it down and stuck it to my wall. I need that reminder. Am I trying to do every little good thing and ending up stressed? We can’t do ALL the things. We have to do some picking and choosing somewhere.

OR am I carefully choosing to focus on what it is I want my life to be about?

Just a little food for thought on this sleep-deprived-post-election day. What is your mission in life? That is the most important question here.

I want mine to be about serving the Lord. I want to walk in peace with Him, serving him by serving others through the ministries that He has given me. I want my boys to feel cherished and to know what is important. I want my husband to have a wife that builds him up and is a trustworthy companion. I want my blog to be a gospel-sharing ministry that brings joy. I want to live a life that is in line with God’s plan for me.

How about you? What do you want your life to be about? What things do you say ‘no’ to in order to focus on your mission?

P.S. Congratulations are in order to Angela, of Missouri, for winning the bamboo cutting board!!!!  Hurray!! Want your own? Go here to order one.

Click on this picture to read the Veteran’s Day article I wrote for Monterey Premier.

Happy Veteran’s Day! Hope you all get a day off!

The post The Weight of the Choices that We Make appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

There are 3 things everyone should do the week they are moving:

1. Throw away as much junk as possible.
2. Sell and giveaway as much junk as possible.
3. Cry and hug people.

So that’s what we’ve been doing.

We’re officially under contract on a house I’m excited about too. Wahooo!!!  It has ZERO carpet in the living and dining areas. The master bathtub is gigantic, and so is the fenced backyard, so let me tell ya. I am happy.

Am I sad to leave? Nope! There ARE lots of people I loved here, and I will miss you all. I’ve been feeling melancholy about that for sure. I LOVED my friends at CC and my neighbors and our sweet, sweet church family. I will miss all of you.

The thing is that I will unfortunately always associate Monterey with 2 things:

1. Homeschooling and how I felt like such a failure at it

and

2. The ocean and the delightful whales, otters, and seals that I loved so much

Well, okay, also #3…

3. My little health crisis (psoriatic arthritis-ugh!), which was mostly due to the stress of #1 and not visiting #2 as much as I should have.

There are so many if-onlys. But the positive is that we persevered. The past cannot be changed, but the future certainly can.

And so that is my best take-away from this little detour we called grad school:

Do not neglect fun. Do what you enjoy.

Having fun is far more important than I ever realized. The life that I am setting up for myself at our new house will look much different than what I was doing here.

Next year the boys are going to go to school, where they will be taught by people who (hopefully) enjoy teaching. Our house will be so close to Dan and Caleb’s school that we can walk there. And I am going to make more time for being out in nature with the boys because that is what I love to do. I will also have more time to write because that is my calling.

God created this big, beautiful world. It is a healing thing to take time to enjoy it. Our creator also bestowed us each with different gifts and talents, perspectives, and leanings. He does not wish for us to be idle, but he doesn’t want us to spend all our time fulfilling other people’s callings. We each have our own calling. We all have work we are capable of enjoying.

We are most happy when we are doing what we enjoy and teaching our children to do the same.

But we should not work ALL the time. I’ve always been good about taking vacations, but the past two years it was very rare for me to do anything fun DURING the week. I was not a “fun mom.” I was so busy trying to wear all my hats. I forgot the importance of ever just having fun.

That was a mistake. From now on, I am making more time for fun, even begging, borrowing, and stealing time for fun. This summer you won’t see posts on lesson planning or self-improvement. You are going to see posts on Disney World, baking, getting my Southern accent back, and shenanigans, shenanigans, shenanigans.

And as for those people who may be disappointed in me for not home-schooling anymore? Oh well. I only hope that they know that there is more than one way to skin a cat, and our family needs to skin our cat in a way that doesn’t make me feel like poking my own eye-balls out.

All I know is it’s time for our family to start having a little more fun again. Wait. That’s not quite right. The boys have been having fun all along.

It’s time for me to start having fun again.

“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.”  Psalm 30:5

Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching. Do not neglect your gift.   1 Timothy 4:13-14

From now on I’m going to focus more on the gifts I do possess and forget about the ones I’m lacking. Those things will be stealing my joy no longer.

Let’s all have a little more fun!!

The post Life Lessons I Learned from Our Years in Monterey appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

A peacock, who sits on his feathers, is just another turkey.

Life is so much more fun when you quit worrying about what others think of you. It’s not about “me” anyway.

The other week I sang a solo at church. It used to make me ridiculously nervous.

Why does it make us nervous to do something we love in front of other people?

Because there are people! And they are watching! And what if your hair is messed up, or there’s lipstick on your teeth, or you miss a note?

But what if you don’t? What if you just stomp on all of those thoughts, embrace the very soul inside yourself, and just do it!

That’s what I did the other week. I had all these doctor appointments and mystery health problems hanging over my head, and something about it all pushed me over that selfish ledge that has eluded me. I managed to hop that fence, you know, the one that stands between caring and not caring about what anyone else will say.

Plop! There I was on the other side of that fence, and it felt amazing! I stood there, it was the most empowering thing to just not worry, and I sang my heart out to Jesus, just as if I were in my very own shower.

I was not nervous because it wasn’t about me anymore.

Who cares if someone out there chuckles about me? Good. Glad they got a laugh. Serving isn’t about me. It’s about giving what I have.

Have fun with life!

Ha! I bet some of you wonder why I’m always sharing my crazy crap on the internet.

It’s worth it, y’all. Do what you love, and shamelessly share it. It may even turn into income for you. I turn away work now all the time because I’m still too busy with all of my children to take on outside work, but I’m still here, writing and sharing, maintaining what I enjoy. Income opportunities can be taken care of later, when I have time for that.

I believe in not putting pressure on yourself to “have it all.” Maybe you can have it all throughout your lifetime, but why stress yourself out going for all of it at once? Where’s the fun in that?

I wish I could go back to the sweet, timid, 23-year-old me. I would tell her, “Who cares if you don’t have a job and don’t know what you want to be? You’re happy being a wife and cooking and keeping house. Master that, and don’t worry about what anyone else says. There will be so much time to work a career and raise children in due time.”

Life is too short to impress people who won’t be impressed anyway.

I’m going to spend this weekend praising and thanking God for this beautiful life that I have been given. We are going to hang out as a family, going to birthday parties and basketball games. I’ll probably eat and talk too much and accomplish precious little. The kids will be loud. John David will follow me around. People will always be asking me, “What about dinner?” It will be glorious.

For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.  Galatians 1:10

Romans 12:6-8 

 

We all have different gifts, each of which came because of the grace God gave us. The person who has the gift of prophecy should use that gift in agreement with the faith. 7 Anyone who has the gift of serving should serve. Anyone who has the gift of teaching should teach. 8 Whoever has the gift of encouraging others should encourage. Whoever has the gift of giving to others should give freely. Anyone who has the gift of being a leader should try hard when he leads. Whoever has the gift of showing mercy to others should do so with joy.

The post Life gets really fun once you get over yourself. appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Age 19

I was a freshman at the University of Alabama.

Back then it felt like I was undecided about EVERYTHING. That was the semester we helped our friend Jason try out for Big Al, and he made it! That was the spring they fired Alabama football Coach Mike Dubose, after he had an affair with his secretary. I went from “14th floor girl” to an off campus apartment dwelling sophomore. I had no boyfriend, yet I still managed to get my heart broken a couple of times. I was always falling in love, or like, or confusion.

I was the QUEEN of clueless dating, as in I could not have been more clueless about how to handle boys.

Mostly I played hard to get, and it worked. No one got me. Ha! I was 19, and for most of us, that was what we did. Right? Surely I wasn’t the only one.

I cannot, for the life of me, remember if I spent that summer working at the physical therapy clinic or the shoe store. During the school year, I worked at Alumni Hall for the best boss ever. On campus jobs are the best!

I do remember that when I was 19, I knew exactly who I was, but I had no idea where I was going or what I would be.

That’s right. I was an undecided major. I hated that label. It felt sketchy. I was a scholarship winner. I should have a plan, a purpose of some kind! I should at least know where I was going in life.

But I didn’t. The funny thing is that I was already fulfilling my callings. I was already volunteering. Every Tuesday afternoon, I worked at Kid’s Klub, an after school club in the housing projects, where we taught kids about Jesus. I also recruited every boy I ever had a crush on to go work it with me. That eventually made it awkward after they blew me off but kept going to Kid’s Club. Ha!!

And I wrote constantly. I wrote almost every single day.

My habit was that every time I sat down to study, and I studied somewhat faithfully, I would first read something from my Bible and write in my journal.

I was always poor, as in literally out of money, so I occasionally picked up writing assignments for extra money. Someone once asked me what I used that money for. I was like, “Huh?? For food!”

Getting Crushed Too Easily…

The university had a program where you could test out of Freshman Comp (English for freshmen). Therefore, I got to enroll in an American Literature class when I was 19. That class did not go well. The grungy graduate student who taught the class hated my papers. He gave me a B+ on every single one. That seems like a fine score to me now, but back then I knew something was amiss. He never made any marks on the page. I suspected that he didn’t even read them.

I was a firm believer in talking to professors. I used to get my Bs changed to As every single semester, simply by talking to the teacher. I learned this from the movie Clueless. Thank you, Alicia Silverstone.

The graduate student, who spent each class telling us about whatever he did that weekend and how weird he thought southerners were, informed me that my papers “were like a clean coat of paint with nothing underneath.”

Youch.

He said if I wowed him on the final paper, I could get an A.

I should really find better “back in the day” photos…

I spent that week working on everything but that final paper, saved it for the last two days, and could not for the life of me find a poem I liked enough to write a paper about.

I finally scribbled out something ridiculous and turned it in. (I should have gone with Robert Louis Stevenson. You can never go wrong with Robert Louis Stevenson.)

My writer dream died that year.

Was that professor right? Maybe a little. I didn’t care much about the topics I was writing about. I was nineteen. I cared more about finding a way to walk to his class without having giant sweat circles under my arms. Tuscaloosa, Alabama is HOT, y’all! Also I was more concerned about my crushes than I was about writing brilliant essays.

Ah, well.

I was also wrong.

You cannot let the opinions of just one person, especially a person that does not even know you, affect your decisions.

I do not necessarily regret my undecided major or the fact that I never took another college literature class. It was just part of my story, and it’s a great lesson to look back on of not letting hurtful words, whether they are true or not, get you down.

Who cares if he didn’t like my papers?

Some people DID like my writing. More importantly, my writing has served many purposes in my life and in the lives of others.

I do want to live a life that pleases God. I do want to be a blessing to my family. Everyone else? Eh…. I do want to be a blessing to them, but I don’t need their approval.

The surest way to please NO ONE is to try to please everyone.

Besides, some people will never be pleased.

I did eventually declare a major: psychology, pre-physical therapy. Later on I dropped the pre-physical therapy part.

I have used my degree too, but it has never been in either of those fields because life is funny like that. The thing is, I’m a writer. I was then, and I am now. I could no more quit writing than I could change my eye color.

If you are an undecided major, or you haven’t figured out “your purpose” yet, just keep charging forward. Stop and notice what you’re already doing. Maybe that IS your purpose. It’ll eventually make more sense. Maybe you just need more time to hone your craft before you can share it. I did. True, I tried many different things and felt a little lost in the sauce after graduating, but that is a story for another day.

Wear your “undecided” with joy. Your day is coming.

Thanks for the inspiration, Tamera!

I’m off to throw a surprise birthday party with my neighbors! Happy Birthday, Jackie!!

The post Hey, It’s Okay to be an Undecided Major! appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I resisted posting their picture for as long as I could, but it’s just too good. Such a blessing to share the retreat with these ladies!!

“You can change your life by changing your thoughts.” —Denise Cunningham

I’m still benefitting from my retreat. In fact, look at me. It’s been a week, and I’m STILL talking about it.

This thought-changing lesson is one that God is really drilling into my brain lately. First, it came up in the book I’ve been reading, Unglued, by Lysa Terkeurst. Then Denise brought it up at the retreat.

The importance of our thought life cannot be overstated. It will change who you are! I used to look at any mess in my house and think, “I am such a mess,” allowing that mess to define me and weigh me down.

Why must I be my own worst enemy?

Forget that mess. It’s not ME. It’s just stuff. I’m raising four children here. That mess is just a chore and nothing more.

“Boys! Clean up this floor before you even think about going outside.”

There. Done. My floor is no longer a total mess, and neither am I. I wasn’t a mess before they cleaned it up either. I was just doing that stinkin’ thinkin’ thing.

Let’s be done with that.

What thoughts do you need to turn around?

Let’s level with those thoughts, focus on what we can fix, and pray about the things that we can’t fix.

Figure out what is stealing your joy, and go to war with that. Sometimes we can only pray. Don’t count that out, though, as a small contribution. I have felt powerless about so many things, where all I could do was PRAY. Yet it turned out to be exactly what was needed, and God solved those problems FOR me.

For example: I pray crying babies on airplanes to sleep. Laugh all you want, but crying babies bother me. I know. I know. I can’t help it. I pray them to sleep. It’s never taken God more than a minute or two to get a baby to sleep that I was praying for on an airplane. Now you may snicker and think that’s small beans. It is not. As a mother of four who has flown more than my fair share with all of my babies, I can tell you that crying babies usually elevate stress in the mother the most. Past that, it aggravates those with flight anxieties, headaches, etc. Therefore, praying babies to sleep is a precious gift to many. We all need a little more peace and quiet in our lives, right?

Sometimes we can take practical steps too.

One thing that was stealing my joy was the complaining or negotiating that my boys would do at school.

I have one son in particular that complains and negotiates. That had to go. I can’t live like that. We’re still working on it, but the little chart I made is paying off!!! Big time! Now when a student whines, instead of increasing my heart rate and beginning to unravel myself, I just say, “Go and remove a check mark.”

No need to let someone else’s problem ruin my day. Perseverance is winning this race.

I set up that chart so that every time some one obeys WITHOUT whining or complaining, I give them a check mark. Once they get 17 check marks, they get a prize. They’ve all already earned their first prize: going to see a movie with Mom.

We saw Hotel Transylvania 2. (You can safely skip that movie.)

For the next completed chart, we’re going to Cold Stone Creamery.

I read somewhere that giving toys as prizes increases materialism, so I’m choosing activities instead. This sweet boy is the only one that has already earned his second prize:

My thoughts are still very much a work in progress, but this is not something I have to fix by myself.

When we belong to God, He gives us the Holy Spirit to help us along. We need only to rely on that help.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Against such things there is no law.”  Galatians 5:22-23

“But when they arrest you [for your faith], do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”                Matthew 10:19-20

God will always answer our cries for help, when we are asking him to help us with the right motive. It is definitely his will for us to have positive thoughts, tuning out the lies of the devil, and living happy, productive lives– lives that benefit not only ourselves but also minister to others.

Therefore, we know that if we ask God for help with our thoughts, he will be faithful to send exactly what we need.

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”       Philippians 4:6-7

This is the kind of stuff I repeat to myself over and over on days like this, with multiple tutoring sessions, play dates, soccer practices, and meals to get on the table. Phew! Life is exhausting, but if we rely on God and even enlist others to help us, we can feel renewed rather than weary! No one ever said that we need to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. I will no longer be ashamed to reach my arms up and out for help.

My friends and I, on our way home from retreat

“We pray that you will be strengthened from God’s boundless resources, so that you will find yourselves able to pass through any experience and endure it with joy.”   Colossians 1:11

It took going away for a weekend for me to see my life for what it actually is:

My life is adorable!!! No, life isn’t supposed to be easy, but gracious, it ought to be FUN!!

Sometimes we all need to take a step backwards to look at the whole picture. Wow! What a lively, large, laughter-filled, lavish, light, liberated, lovely, lucky, Lord-honoring lot that I have in life!

Today I am thankful, and being thankful brings joy, and joy cannot help but spill over.

The post You Can Change Your Life By Changing Your Thoughts appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.