Relationships

Please Don't Interrupt Me

Did you know that April is National Poetry Month?

I love poetry: to read it, to write it, to get lost in the language and the pictures. To savor the fragment that doesn't seem big enough or long enough, and yet it captures everything.

I love poetry, and in honor of National Poetry Month ? and in keeping with the spirit of poetry, a shared, often oral tradition ? ...

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Prodigal in the House—Part II

Earlier this year in "Part I," I shared some practical lessons learned during our daughter's defiant teen years. This time I will approach things from a spiritual vantage point.

Looking back over our experience I now appreciate the gift time game me, perspective. We weathered many long years of our daughter's adolescent rebellion and learned many lessons. ...

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Prodigal in the House

Have you ever tried to wake up from a nightmare only to find that you were awake? That's how I felt when our "perfect" daughter became a strong-willed, rebellious teen. The transition seemed as quick as switching TV channels. It caught us totally unprepared.

Although we made many mistakes during our five-year ordeal, we learned a lot. As a pastor's family, ...

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Top 10 Articles from 2007

This week, as I reflected on Gifted for Leadership's first year, I decided to do a little analysis. I checked back through our "traffic patterns" for the last 12 months to find the most-read articles on the blog. I though you might be interested in this information, as I was, so I've decided to share it with you. Here's a list of the Top 10 most-read articles of 2007, along ...

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Leading Your Leaders

As a leader, it's easy to understand and embrace your responsibility for those entrusted to your leadership. But how often do you think about your responsibility to lead your leaders? Try these 10 strategies for exercising your leadership skills in relationship to those who lead you.

1. Pray for them. This is pretty self-explanatory. Everyone needs prayer, and people ...

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The Trouble with Harmony

An infestation of fleas in our house. A large, newly identified plantar wart on my foot. A persistent and painful overgrowth of yeast afflicting my seven-week old daughter's mouth and my breast. Welcome to my life last week: invasion of the parasites.

My budding pest situation reminded a friend of the Egyptians' 10 plagues in Exodus when Pharaoh wouldn't give ...

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Passionate Reconciliation

Your goal is to "ignite a passion for reconciliation." What do women in leadership need to understand about this?

Women especially ought to take racial reconciliation seriously because we've got sisters all around the world for whom reconciliation is not an option.

What do you mean?

Wherever there has been violence, war, genocide, and atrocities the men have ...

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Gossips Anonymous

A little while back, I learned a very juicy (and heartbreaking) tidbit of info. While I was dying to follow up with a "Why? What happened?" I didn't. I simply said I'd pray for the people involved but wouldn't talk about it anymore. And although immediately five friends sprang to mind who would LOVE to hear this tidbit, I didn't call or email any ...

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Why Forgiveness Works

I once heard a boy brag about his father locking his mother in a room until she repented for "not being submissive." He was my teammate on a teen mission trip to Venezuela. At 16, already harboring anger toward men, it was not what I needed to hear.

The church has not always championed women, and growing up, I suffered for it. Christian girls were supposed to ...

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Apologies That Work

One thing we as women leaders need to ask ourselves is, Are we to follow traditional models or seek to break new ground? If we're interested in breaking new ground, I think one of the best ways to integrate our instinctive feminine strengths into our leadership is by setting a positive example with by the transparency of our apologies.

Isn't it sad that apologies ...

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