By Nicole

Here I am...  a hot mess.  Sitting on my couch, drinking Shocktop and eating chocolate chips.  I want to cry and scream and vent and hide and sleep for days.  Although, in the grand scheme of things (I use that reference a lot, I think), there really isn't anything that bad going on.  Work is more stressful and hurtful than usual.  I'm climbing out of a post-marathon running slump.  Recent decisions in our country have my head spinning, even though I usually don't keep up on politics and court matters.  My check engine light is on.  We are in the middle of logging part of our property.  My husband's grandpa has been sick, which has us worried and distracted.  I'm spending a lot of time worrying about how it all affects me... and my kids... and my marriage. I'm questioning a lot of things. Hating that I'm feeling like I'm bobbing aimlessly.  I slack on a lot of things.  I procrastinate.  But I'm not a quitter.  And I won't quit. My job, my famil

That I did. It was unplanned, but here I am.... staring at a neglected blog.  Sarah Markley backed me up in her recent post...   And that's how it happens.  Life gets crazy.  Or, should I say, crazi-ER... and the things we think that we hope to do end up being the things we drop as we try to juggle the things we know we have to do.  This blog being one of the things I dropped. I also dropped cleaning my house, painting my toenails, and pulling super late nights... like the kind of super late that I choose to stay up and blog instead of sleep. There were things these last few months that contributed to blogging frustration and avoidance. My inability to keep up with all things social media, for one. I tweeted, instagramed, facebooked, blogged and juggled other weird sites to help me stay connected to other blogs and bloggers.  My Google took over my life and my phone and started making circles everywhere.  The next thing I knew I was trying to start a Tumblr account.  Can

Whew!  It has been a while since I've posted. But this read was worth coming out of the woodwork for.  I'd never heard of Bekah Hamrick Martin before requesting to review her book as part of a Litfuse blog tour.  Then I realized that it's because this is her first book!  Yay!  Now I think I might have to keep her on my reading list .  Her and many of the women she spotlighted in her book. Bekah's book outlines the ten lies the world tells us about sex and waiting for marriage.  Every chapter has a spotlight or two (stories from another perspective/person), a quiz, and journal prompts.  While some of the stories and references are tied together across chapters, the topics or sections could easily be used as stand-alone conversation starters for a small group or discussion with a teen.  She ends with references and information about each spotlighted individual. It's not a secret to most of you who have read this blog for some time that I was not an innocent teen