Do. Not. Give. Up. Giving up creates hopelessness. And hopelessness creates a huge black hole of depression and deadness in you. When you quit caring about anything in life, you stop living, even though your heart continues beating. 

Many people find this particular holiday season to be full of heartache, or a nameless void. They can feel a myriad of unwelcome emotions that threaten to overwhelm and sink them into a black hole.

This normal, energetic, intelligent and charming little one had only one problem, and it wasn’t him. It was his parents.

This time I choose to tell a very different truth, one that I fear smacks way too many folks right in their face. That truth? Thanksgiving Day means Christmas Day is only 27 panicky, stressful days away! 

Everyone else is also observing your life and choosing to believe what they want to believe. No matter whether they have checked the story with you or not. I imagine you would appreciate those around you holding their tongue until they hear the truth from the horse’s mouth. Instead of choosing to believe the worst.

Ever created your own mess, and then had to try for a couple of days to find a way out of it? Ending up stressed out and physically exhausted?

A grizzled old man observed with trained eyes and alert ears as the novice young man did his best to hold his own at a table filled with experienced, skillful gamblers and crooked card sharks. Needless to say, things were going from bad to worse.

I am not going to write about naked bodies and the image that phrase seems to conjure up to people. The focus of this column, the nakedness I am writing about? Your future. The naked, unvarnished truth straight out of the Bible, about your eternity.

Forcing myself out of bed, I have a choice of things to worry about from a buffet of disasters; the people ravaged by Hurricane Helene, the entire state of Florida that, even as I am writing, face Milton the Monster, and a presidential election that is threatening to engulf our entire nation in an internal war against ourselves. 

There is a terrifying amount of “I want what I want, and I will accept no less!” surrounding this presidential election. 

Horrible times do come, but He has promised His friends that He will be there. To never abandon us.

You stepped out there and thoroughly blew it, and you knew it. All you could do was apologize. Knowing you were wrong you went ahead…you said “I’m sorry.” 

If you see it, you can never unsee it. You hear it, it’s in your memory bank forever. Unless it’s the phone number to the pediatrician when your kid is running a 102 temp at midnight. But usually, everything you see and hear becomes part of you – good and bad. Kind of a scary, intimidating fact. 

Ever been looked squarely in the eyes and bluntly told you are a bitter, angry person? Probably not. After all, who in their right mind wants to be within 12 feet of a bear and throw heavy stones at that huge, furious mass of muscle and bone? Nobody wants to face that.

If you can actually defend a functioning male who has deliberately walked away from his child and refused to be the dad that child needs in life, then you are an enabler. An enabler is someone who physically, mentally or emotionally aids someone else to shirk their responsibilities in life.