Janet Perez Eckles's Blog – June 2008 Archive (8)

Few people set off with the quest to “look” for a good friend. Relationships, friendships seem to happen all on their own. But friends have a myriad of facets—they come and go, leave an imprint in your heart, make a difference, spill a bit of joy, give you a bit of insight, or some even disappoint you. All kinds of friends, all kinds of effects they leave etched in our lives.



Yesterday, I had a delightful conversation with a good friend, Patti; our memories took us back to our… Continue

Do you know of any? Wish we did. Sunday morning we walked out of the house into a warm sunny day, birds chirping, and a soft breeze blowing. Suddenly, as we reached the driveway, hubby paused and with a calm, cautious, and calculated pitch said, “That’s interesting.”



In the thirty two years I’ve known him, when that tone slips from his lips, there’s something wrong.



Unable to see for obvious reasons, curiosity pricked at me. So my eager questions blurted faster than the… Continue

I do…sometimes I feel instead of me managing time, time manages me, leaving me more ragged than Raggedy Ann.



But then other people are so the opposite. Let me tell you about my friend, Kimberly. This past week she got her house spic ‘n span for a ministry meeting, stopped by the grocery store for ingredients to prepare goodies for us guests, drove 20 minutes to pick me up, ran upstairs to grab one of the throw pillows from my guest room (which she’s helping me re-decorate—another one… Continue

Do you think bank robbers read books with such titles? Maybe they have a web site like robbers.com. Or they might have a Yahoo group to share tips and discuss failures or successes in their devious activity. Who knows?



But I do know one of them fulfilled his plan one morning early this week. My cousin began her morning in the usual way. She got ready, put on her make-up, grabbed a cup of coffee, and gave her daughter fresh fruit and a bowl of cereal. She then proceeded to navigate… Continue

We’ve all heard the praises of this illustrious man, admired for his keen ability to draw insights from politicians and to bring out issues that most wondered about. He was an exemplary family man and a leader in demonstrating compassion toward those who knew him.



But a comment made about him makes me sigh with a hint of jealousy. Someone said that he gave a new meaning and purpose for Sunday mornings as he had an “insatiable hunger to know the truth.”



Wow! I’d like to be… Continue

Have you ever cried out those words? A friend suffers with kidney stones and has mumbled how sick and tired he is of the pain. It persists and returns more often than he’d like.



And when the pain is unbearable, he heads to the emergency room. After filling out a myriad of papers, answering the endless, repetitive questions about his health history and insurance coverage comes the question: On a scale of 0 to 10, what number is your pain?



Aren’t you glad God never asks that… Continue

I have a brother who is intelligent, sweet as can be, and fun-loving. But yesterday I learned yet another trait that spurs added admiration.



While visiting a country home of a friend, a slithering snake visited the back porch. The friend took a shovel to scoop it and toss it into the woods. But my brother, with his bare hand, and with a swift move, grabbed the wiggling snake by the neck, lifted it and hurled it as far as he could into the woods.



Wow! Should we have that… Continue

“I’m an atheist,” declared a close friend at a recent event that hubby and I attended in our hometown. He had just shared a situation which might potentially leave him unemployed.



“God has a plan for you,” I said.



He responded quickly that He did not believe in God, and added that man had created God, rather than God creating man.



I listened as he explained while blurting series of dates which he twisted to support his perception. And of course, the idea of… Continue