It wasn’t part of my parenting lesson plan that day, but I had the opportunity recently to model anger and anger management.

After several months with our house on the market, our family is well-trained to prepare our home for showings to potential buyers. My girls know to empty all the trashcans, put toilet seat lids down, clean the sinks, turn on lights, and clear clutter, clear clutter, clear clutter. I still have to trail behind them to finish the details, but they do pretty well. Read the full story

“Love you,” I said as I hung up the phone.

I don’t usually say that to anyone but family members. In this case, it was a dear friend who had recently lost her mother. But I realized that it is unusual for me to verbally express my deep affection for people, except when we share genes or a last name.

I do say or write those words to a few friends I’ve had for a long, long time. And I have newer friends for whom I feel great affection. But it’s unusual for me to actually tell friends those three little words — or the more casual two, “Love you.”

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Retired Cornelius Commissioner Jim Bensman says Norfolk Southern executives told him two years ago there were concerned about the Red Line rail project’s design and whether freight and passenger traffic could co-exist along the line. Now, in two letters released recently, those concerns are now public. In a commentary on CorneliusNews.net, Mr. Bensman writes: “All the municipalities should cease their evaluations of this project until the Norfolk Southern situation is resolved.”

I majored in communications in college, worked in municipal public relations in California, was a broadcast journalist for eight years, and a weekly columnist for another 10 years.

Despite all that communicating, I’m still learning how inept I can be at it. Especially with my teenage daughter.

You’d think by now I might be pretty good at basic communication — the exchange of thoughts, messages, and information. However, I have much to learn about how to approach the adolescent mind, when to talk, when to listen … and when to run out of the room. Kidding. Sort of. Read the full story

“If you’re going to pray about it, you can’t worry about it. And if you are going to worry, you can’t pray about it,” the woman said to me.

“Can’t pray about it?” I thought. Harsh! But it made sense.
That was similar to the advice Paul, the prolific letter writer, gave the people living in ancient Philippi: That they shouldn’t worry about anything but “let your requests be made known to God.” My friend was giving me the same advice but with a challenging twist, a mirror image but warped like a fun house mirror.

Don’t worry. Pray. Worrying? Don’t pray. Read the full story

The New Year brings with it an opportunity to make new choices. Choices are powerful opportunities to make new changes in our lives. Maybe we should not simply resolve to lose five pounds, but resolve to choose a better path in 2012.

We could choose to grow emotionally, mentally, or spiritually, instead of starting 2013 in the exact same place we are now.
We could choose to respect and protect the world around us, instead of dumping our trash wherever we see fit or wasting our resources whenever we want. Read the full story

I was surprised to hear words from Lindsay Lohan that could provide wisdom for young girls. Life lessons from LiLo? Doubtful. Then I remembered one of the lessons I learned this year (Lesson 1): There’s always an opportunity to learn and sometimes the most lasting lessons come from the most unexpected sources.

The “Housewives of Beverly Hills” taught me that, when they spoke out about suicide prevention. I realized some people would hear the message from them before they’d pay attention to tips from experts on the same topic. It might save a life. Read the full story

It is almost Christmas Eve and there are only two more days of counting down the 12. Our deadline is met.

But, really, why December 25th? How did we pick that date? How do we know that on that specific day a certain little baby was wrapped in swaddling clothes and snuggled into a feeding trough for hungry barn animals? Read the full story