Family by God&#039;s Design

Driven by a Motto of Discontent

Have you learned the “motto of discontent?” I’m sure many of us have. Maybe the commercials taught us this motto. You know, “you could be happy if you only had our product.” Maybe our parents taught us through constant complaining and wishing for more. Maybe it’s just baked into our society, rising from the yeast...

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November 10, 2025

Parenting & “The World Is…”

Our beliefs about the world impact how we interact with and move through the world. They also impact the ways in which we teach our children to move through and interact with the world. Perhaps more importantly, these beliefs impact our sense of well-being, our motivation, our curiosity, and even our success. That’s the message...

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October 11, 2025

A Happier Family for Pennies a Day

Research out of Shenzhen and Peking Universities suggests a way to decrease depressive symptoms and increase positive emotions for just pennies a day. They conducted 3 randomized, controlled trials with a total of 880 participants. These participants all exhibited enough symptoms of depression to reach diagnostic criteria. For the purpose of this study, they were...

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October 7, 2025

The Philosophy of Tortoise

We live in a world that creates in us a “need for speed.” We want our food fast, our goals achieved fast, and our problems solved even faster. As a result, when a problem arises, the default mode is to “attack” it with speed so we can “get it done.” But speed is not always...

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September 29, 2025

A Must-Have for Your Marriage

Many actions build a healthy, happy marriage: good communication, time spent together, conflict resolution, forgiveness, giving voice to our admiration and gratitude, continually learning about our spouse…all these and more play a crucial role in building and maintaining a healthy marriage. However, we often overlook one fun action that promotes a healthy marriage. This action...

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September 29, 2025

An Environment for Growing

Life is filled with distractions, but not all distractions are the same. Distractions come from different sources and in all sizes. In general, distractions impact our children’s ability to focus and sustain their attention as well as their ability to grow and learn. A study published in Behavior Research Methods suggests that upsetting or unpleasant...

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September 15, 2025

Alcohol Abuse, Romance, & Genetics

I recently read that a person’s genetic makeup accounts for approximately 50% of their risk for some type of alcohol abuse disorder. Notice, it accounts for the “risk” of alcohol abuse, not the actual abuse of alcohol itself. Other factors play a role when it comes to a person actually abusing alcohol. One factor that...

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September 6, 2025

A Family with Purpose

We had another wonderful Family Camp at Camp Christian this year. The main speaker, Jeff Bush from the MVA Church of Christ, shared important principles for families, including the importance of love, respect, honor, and accepting influence (also known as mutual submission). Although the messages and the music were wonderful, that is not what makes...

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blessing family family camp purpose

September 1, 2025

A Story to Greater Happiness?

There’s a myth that aging through midlife and into late adulthood is a time of crisis. You know, the midlife crisis. However, late midlife can actually be a time of personal growth and greater “self-transcendence.” A study from a psychologist at the University of Buffalo supports the idea of late midlife as a time of...