The meaning of prayer: breaking it down

During my husband’s and my move from Arizona’s Southwest Valley—to a small town located along the Mogollon Rim that borders the Coconino National Forest—we left our old lives behind to begin a new adventure. At one point, a vehicle passed us with the words “Keep praying!” sprayed on the back window. I smiled to myself,…

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After the leap: beginning a new journey

If you follow my weekly blog posts and receive my Always the Write Time emails, you’re privy to a fresh leap of faith my husband and I recently took. Rather than live with a retirement mentality, we prayerfully chose to retire “early” (by social security standards). We also sold our home and packed up our…

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When you achieve happy-ever-after: what comes next?

The less time you spend dreaming up a world of happily ever after, the more time you’ll have to actually live… ~ Abby McDonald When you achieve a dream or a goal, do you ever consider what comes next? Predictably, in fairytales and modern-day romances, the two love interests ride off into the sunset. Yet…

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Synchronicity at work: trusting the power of prayer

syn·chro·nic·i·ty | \ ˌsiŋ-krə-ˈni-sə-tē , ˌsin- \ plural synchronicities: the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events… that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality… ~ Merriam Webster In my post, “Divine interruptions,” I wrote about a power outage—an incident that occurred summer of 2021 when my husband and I…

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Looking back: recounting the past to inform the future

As we approach the final days of 2021 and look toward the new year, it’s the perfect time to recount the milestone moments that paved our way to present, so that we can better inform our future. Looking back on my own journey, I celebrated the publication of my first two fiction stories — five-minute…

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Getaway of a lifetime: Day 3 (or recognizing the signs)

While exploring acres of forest preserve within Arizona’s White Mountains during our recent getaway, my husband and I soon learned the terrain in the northern part of the state differs from the trail systems in the Valley. With only a picture map on our cellphones as pilots, we relied on blue reflective diamonds strategically tacked…

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