With A Thankful Heart

By Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams

The older I get, the more quickly the year passes. It seems we just observed the Fourth of July and here it is, Thanksgiving. Here’s the kicker—Christmas is less than a month away. As usual, I haven’t purchased the first gift. Heavy sigh.

But, this week, we celebrate Thanksgiving. Two of our four sons will be with us this year. One is our married son who will have our lovely granddaughters with him, along with his beautiful wife, our Daughter-in-Love. It is always so good to hear the laughter of our two granddaughters filling our home. And, it’s such a blessing to see two of our boys communicating with one another as grown men.

Those are only a few of the things we are thankful for this year. 

Giving Thanks--Generation to Generation

By Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams

Y’all know that one of my favorite things is genealogy. Finding my ancestors has become not just a hobby, but a life-long quest for my sister and me.

Sis and I talk every day, first thing in the morning, which for us is usually somewhere between eight and nine. I am not an early morning person unless I have to be. Of course, we always talk about our kids and our grandkids, and in her case, her soon-to-be eight great-grands. Wow!

Another thing you know about me is that this November, for the first time, I am participating in NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, the object of which is to get fifty-thousand words written—a good start for a novel. I got a bit of a late start, but I’ve managed to have somewhere around forty-thousand words in book two of my Charlotte Graves series, when you add my NaNo words to my already-written words.

But, while I’ve been writing a novel, many of you have been writing about things you are thankful for. I’ve really enjoyed reading your posts. Among those of you doing this is my niece, Shelly Foshee. She is my sister’s daughter-in-love. Shelly is an amazing woman, one whom I wish all of you could know. She is daughter, wife, mother, and now, Nana. Add to those, student, nurse, teacher, mentor, intercessor, prayer-warrior. You get the picture. Busy.

Holidays are Coming, Will You be Stressed or at Peace?

By Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams

The holidays are coming. Here it is October and it will fly by just as the summer whose temperatures hung on tenaciously. But Fall seems to have finally arrived. With it will come all things pumpkin, changing of the leaves, crisp air, and . . . stress.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are just around the corner. While we always look forward to those joyful events, they bring along unwanted baggage. We scurry around trying to prepare everyone’s favorite foods. We clean, even though we will have to do it again once everyone returns to their own homes. And, if you are like many families, you wonder if, and pray that, everyone will be on their best behavior.

Holidays are just stressful. Thanksgiving is bad enough, but then comes Christmas—

that season which proclaims joy, peace, and goodwill. But sometimes, Christmas is anything but. Insert heavy sigh here. I know you know what I mean. We’ve all been there one year or another. But there is hope and help.

I Get By With A Little Help - From a Blog

by Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams

Do you look with envy at all those Instagram and FaceBook posts where people’s homes are decorated to the nines? You know the ones I’m talking about. Your sister who has every cutesy-pie little decorative piece here and there and everywhere and she posts photos of Every. Single. Thing. she owns. You do realize that you are not the abnormal one in this picture, don’t you? So many of us are in the last-minute-club that looking at those photos just sends us into the Guilt Zone─much scarier than the Twilight Zone.