The Storyteller | Mary Vee

Photo by Mary Vee a lovely restaurant in Venice, Italy not the location of today's post, though I sat with a group of friends at a restaurant and because of the angle of my chair, I saw an interesting situation play out. An older man and woman sat across from each other at a table. He told her a lengthy story during their meal, animating his words with his hands. He was so engaged in this tale he even laughed and snorted. I wish I could have heard what he said. Anyway, the woman kept her eyes on him but barely responded. I thought, why isn't she laughing with him? Even if what he said wasn't funny, his laughter was funny. But she didn't say a word or laugh the entire time I watched.  At the end of the meal she excused herself to the ladies room. He paid the bill, and the waiter brought Styrofoam boxes holding what I assumed was the food they couldn't eat. He looked back toward the ladies room. Ah, the body language was clear. He had to use the men...

Photo by Mary Vee, Arizona Today's late post is brought to you by a Mary Vee who has only seconds ago taken a BIG chill pill. Good grief. I opened the site to write today's post...whatever that topic was is long gone--wiped out by epic frustration. Although I could open my blog's schedule and examine settings and other details, I could not get to the composition page.  That's when I discovered my blog had been shut down. That's when I discovered my blog had "expired". That's when I discovered my blog did not revert to the failsafe address. The dorky one with blogspot.com in the address. That's when I slipped into dysfunctional mode. Okay, I am not a dork when it comes to technology. I have taught myself HTML survival and can modify mostly any code to look the way I want. I can find help desks. Follow directions. Sheesh I set up this blog with my own domain. But today I wasn't expecting a spiraling demise. The system ha...

It's rare to have post day fall on my birthday. This year it did. Having a summer birthday had some interesting advantages. All my siblings, and there were several, had fall or winter birthdays. Since my parents didn't have much money, anything expensive for the family was given as a birthday present. Made sense, right? Yep. So, when summer came and the brood needed an inflatable pool out in the backyard, it appeared as my gift. Too awesome. Well, we all couldn't fit in the smaller pool at one time, but we managed to have a ton of fun. There was also a few other perks given to the birthday person in our family. The honored one could choose one place to celebrate, pick what was served for the family dinner, and they got out of chores.  I usually chose to either go miniature golfing with Dad, he always beat me, or have the whole family visit Aunt Betty. She is a funny, make you feel-good-to-be-around-her person. Her personality is one I still aspire to ...

I didn't know what I was getting in to when I met Ruth Logan Herne. From the first moment I said hi, she cracked a joke. She has an amazing ability to make anyone smile and appreciate life. Need proof? Read her words today: God's Timing Mary Vee, thank you so much for inviting me over today! I brought coffee… and an old-fashioned “Angel Pie” from a garden club cookbook I found at an antique co-op…  I first want to say, God gives us the power to create our own path no matter where our journey begins.  My little urchins (I watch a small herd of diaper-clad local monsters with chronically runny noses)  love Candyland, but you never know when the turn of a card might send you back to the rainbow bridge or the peanut brittle swamp!!! And that’s life, isn’t it, the whole fly on the wheel, sometimes up… often down… My life began in poverty, but I refuse to dwell there or revisit often. When God handed out opportunities, I clung to them. When...

Location:  A Remote Village in the Mountains of Honduras An Abandoned Wycliffe Compound Miles from any road bigger than a two-track. There he sat.  A boy about eight years old. At the top of the hill overlooking a Wycliffe compound. He pulled at the grass and fiddled with the earth while watching us, and, I think unknown to him, in my view.  About thirty of us sat in an early morning meeting huddled on benches set in a circle.  Doctors,  nurses, child ministry workers, and teen translators gathered that morning first for Scripture reading, a devotion, songs of praise, then to divide into teams and head out to villages beyond the two tracks. According to officials, medical workers rarely came to this boy's village and the ones beyond. The boy probably couldn't understand the mixture of Honduran, Guatemalan, Nicaraguan, American, and Canadian languages spoken by our blended medical team sent to help him and others.  But...

We've all had something fail. Maybe a school assignment, baking a cake, changing a car tire. Well that was my shortlist confession. There really is a mile long list that you don't want to hear.  Talk about a quick drive to the blues. Even one negative comment in a barrel full of praises can take us down. Sigh. Why oh why do we remember the one negative one and forget the positives.  You are not alone. We all do this. But there is a way of escape. Today, Suzanne Woods Fisher is going to share her story. The Fear of Failure “For I am the Lord, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you. Do not fear; I will help you” (Isaiah 41:13, niv).              Years ago, before I received my first book contract, an editor returned a manuscript to me with the comment that the writing wasn’t up to her publishing house’s “caliber.”  Ouch!  That was a tough remark to swal...