Month: January 2026

My ten year old granddaughter was so excited. Her parents had finally given in to her begging to have a hamster for a pet. She picked out her favorite at the pet store, helped to select the cage, the bedding and the food. She couldn’t wait to get the little critter set up in her room so she could watch it climb ladders, run in its wheel and munch on its food.

What she and her parents didn’t realize (and neither did I), was that hamsters are nocturnal. They basically spend all day buried under their bedding and only become active at night. The little girl was deeply disappointed after spending hours staring at nothing but the hole in the bedding where the hamster had burrowed in for the day.

Sometimes things just don’t turn out the way we expect them to. Disappointment is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to linger. Shake it off, pick yourself up. Move on. Within a few days my granddaughter had moved on to other interests. Mom and Dad wound up taking care of the hamster. Now THAT was unexpected disappointment.

I had a birthday recently. I turned 75 years old. Wow. 75 years. God has blessed me with three-quarters of a century on this earth. Harry Truman was president the year I was born! I was here before computers, the internet, mobile phones, and cable TV.

What a journey it has been. Terrific highs and terrible lows. Through it all, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has pulled me through. Hard to imagine I could have navigated through the roller coaster of life without Him.

You have been on your journey as well. You’ve had joy and sadness, peace and worry. We all need a stabilizing force. An unchanging standard to cling to. It’s right there in the Bible. Get into it every day. It may not heal all of your pain, but it will show you the light at the end of your travels.

We spend too much time looking at screens. The average American spends nearly seven hours per day watching some sort of screen. It might be your phone, your computer, your TV or even your smart watch. Many must look at screens in their jobs.

It’s not good for us. It can cause eye strain, disrupt our sleeping pattern, and give us anxiety. It can also lead to weight gain, even obesity. Makes sense that the time we spend watching screens is time we are not exercising or burning calories.

I confess I am a little nervous telling you this, because you read this blog on a screen. Medical folks say we should try to limit our screen time to between two and four hours per day. I hope you will use one minute of that time to continue to read my blog. I’ll keep them short.

When I was a child, we had just one TV set in our house. My parents insisted on watching the Lawrence Welk show on Saturday night. I hated it. Having to listen to all that old, corny music, and Lawrence’s broken English. But Mom and Dad reveled in it. They would tap their feet and even sing along. It took them back to their heyday. It made them very happy.

Now, some 65 years later, those Lawrence Welk reruns are still on the air. Even more surprising, I find myself watching them. Not because I’ve come to like the music, but because it brings back precious memories of my sweet parents smiling and full of joy. They are long since in heaven, but I still picture them reminiscing in their recliners. I miss them so much.

So much of what I am today is because of them. They left me with wonderful memories. I hope I can do the same. I hope we all can.

They call us baby boomers, but what we really are is the ‘Tweener generation. My parents never used a computer or the internet for anything their entire lives. My children and grandchildren use computers and the internet for everything, and their lives are deeply connected to it. I am the transition link. I know just enough to be able to turn on a PC and surf the internet. I can send an email or a text message. I can buy a pair of pants online and order food from an app.

Oh, and I can post these blogs. That’s about it. Beyond that, I have a deep distrust of the cyber world. I don’t like banking or paying bills electronically. I put little credibility in anything I read on social media unless it’s from a friend. Even then, sometimes you don’t know if it truly is your friend, or a scammer disguised as your friend.

I’m a bit worried about our young people. They have sold their privacy to the internet. My daughter says I’m just afraid of what I don’t understand.

She’s right. We all should be.

Loneliness has nothing to do with how many people are around you. It has to do with fitting in, feeling cared about. A recent survey by the Cigna company found that three out of every five Americans feel that nobody really knows them. Did you know that in 2023 the surgeon general declared loneliness a national epidemic? He stated that the lack of social connections is the equivalent to our health of smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.

If you feel lonely and left out, you have to be proactive about dealing with it. People are likely not going to come and find you. The culture is just not built for that. You’re going to have to make a move. Go to church, get involved in a small group. Do volunteer work. Join a pickleball group or a book club. Your local hospital always needs volunteers. So do your schools.

You’ll meet people. Friendly people. You’ll be surprised at how quickly relationships develop. So don’t sit around and mope. You have the power to cast loneliness aside.

Sharon and I just saw a wonderful, emotional movie that was based on a true story. I’m not sure why, but I always feel compelled to immediately search the internet to fact check films like this to see how much of it was real, and how much was creative license. Inevitably, I find out that many of the scenes never really happened, and even some of the characters were invented. That turned out to be true of this movie as well.

Interestingly, when I tried to tell a friend, who had also seen the film, about the departures from reality, she didn’t want to hear them. She says it will spoil the memory of the movie. She’d rather go on believing in the story as it was depicted.

Nothing wrong with that I suppose. It’s just a movie. Why not enjoy the fantasy? So long as we don’t accept a distorted version of real life. Striving for material success without a relationship with God is always going to lead to a sad ending.

There are all kinds of old adages and sayings for overcoming disappointment. We’ve all heard stuff like “If at first you don’t succeed”, or “Don’t give up the ship”, or “Get back up on that horse”, and many more.

The truth is, it’s not that easy to recover from failure and heartbreak. It can be personal, and embarrassing, and discouraging. We’re not built to just bounce right back from adversity. It’s okay to take a minute, draw a few deep breaths, relax and think through where you want to go from here. Seeking God’s guidance and vision is always helpful.

Your mountain may seem too hard to climb. But maybe you’re on the wrong mountain.

The worst thing you can do as you get older is nothing. Sitting and not moving, such as when you watch TV or surf the internet, is your enemy. Your body and mind need exercise, or else they will both turn to mush. It will happen more quickly than you think.

Go ahead and watch that football game or that movie, but every half hour, stand up, stretch your arms and legs, twist your torso, march in place for a few seconds, maybe take a lap around the house, or go get the mail, put a load of laundry into the washer. Just do something that requires moving. It wakes up your heart and lungs and improves your blood flow.

At least once each day, make your brain work a little. Read a book, do a crossword puzzle, figure out your budget, work a jigsaw puzzle, just something that makes you think.

Move it or lose it. It really is true.

These days there are surveys and polls for everything. One that caught my eye recently was a survey to find out how much time out of each day people spend worrying. Somehow, they came up with the figure of two hours and 18 minutes.

I’m having trouble understanding how one can arrive at this figure. When I’m worried about something, I pretty much think about it constantly. I suppose this proves it is possible to make yourself stop worrying. Which is a good thing. Worry is a wasted emotion. It does nothing to solve the issue.

I know people who are constant worriers. Maybe it helps them prepare psychologically for their challenges. Just keep in mind, that’s two hours and 18 minutes you’ll never get back. Better to spend it confident in the knowledge God loves you and is working for your good.