Life with Sally

The secret to cultivating a lifegiving home is not a perfectly balanced life, luxurious home, or a fancy table of food. Instead, it is an open mind, inspired heart, and a deep longing to create stability, no matter the circumstances.

The starting point of your influence is the state of your own heart, mind and soul. If there is purity, wisdom, strength, faith, love and righteousness there, then when you pour out your life, those around you will be blessed indeed.

In all of our ideals, righteousness is progressive. In other words, we make mistakes, we fail, sometimes we do foolish things because they are so accepted in culture. Sometimes, wickedness jumps after us like Potifer's wife chasing Joseph. And our children learned the concept of fleeing--just drop what will burn you and flee--run immediately away from the temptation.

These days, it seems we're constantly faced with another example of an influential man using his power for evil, living without morals or care for others, or maybe even one who chooses to look the other way when confronted with another man's bad behavior. Now more than ever, we need good men in this world, men who live a life dedicated to goodness, heroism, protecting those in need, and love.

We all long for kindred spirits — those with whom we could spend hours dreaming, laughing, and sharing our heart's troubles. But many people I know struggle to find those kindred spirits. Living our busy lives, we hope that lifelong friendships will fall into our lap, or come knocking at our front door. But over many years of struggling with loneliness myself, I've found that the best way to cultivate a true, deep-rooted friendship is to commit to seeking them out, intentionally going out of our way to invite a new friend over for a cup of tea and a deep discussion.

At this time in history, where very little is considered sacred or holy, we must seek diligently to create not just knowledge of what the word holy means, but to place tangible practices in our lives where we and our children come to learn that some things are sacred and set apart and deserve our reverence and worship.

Anyone who is seasoned in their faith has become used to trials, difficulties and hard times. Yet, it is how they responded to their stress and challenges that makes them worthy to follow.

We are all human beings—fragile—and limited. We need to take time to refresh, relax and restore. From time to time, when my four were much younger, and I had pushed them to their limits during the day without a nap, too much activity, beyond their bedtime, too much sugar, and sometimes with lots of over-stimulation, bedtime would be impossible.