Sally Clarkson's Blog, page 44

Why Stories Matter (& Nathan's New Movie!)

Click here to play today’s new podcast episode.

I recently released my latest book Giving Your Words (if you haven’t already, be sure to order your copy today!). With this book, I sought to explore the power that words have in shaping the souls of our children.

One of the most powerful ways words can affect the hearts of children is through the amazing art of story. God used his words to breathe all of scripture, which we use to shape and guide us, and all of scripture is filled with stories. This reality of God loving and speaking to us through story is something I took to heart when my children were very young. So from the time they could understand, I began filling their minds and hearts, reading to them day after day, year after year, from great and wonderful stories. Each word of every great tale of history, fantasy, fiction, and more, poured into their hearts giving them an understanding of who God is, visions for the heroes they could become, and wonder for the world they live in.

Stories have the power to shape, move, and create us. Unfortunately, now we live in a time when the stories that are being told today are void of the life-giving beauty that God intended and are instead displaying narratives of anger, dysfunction, immorality, despair, and shallowness. As a result, a tired and broken world is so often left without tales that would draw them closer to their creator and stories that can show them who they were made to be.

Nathan was always my story-boy. As he struggled with learning disabilities like dyslexia and ADHD, and mental illness like OCD, his heart was always drawn to great stories of heroes that served as a salve to the pain he experienced and an inspiration for who he could become. I would spend endless hours reading aloud to Nathan as a child, as he would lay sprawled out on the floor drawing the scenes I would narrate. Then he started writing his own stories and acting them out in the backyard with his friends. Fast-forward to today, Nathan is now a professional actor who has not only acted in TV shows and movies but also writes and produces his own movies. It should be no wonder to me that my little boy who was so drawn to great stories as a child, would grow up with a desire to tell them himself.

Nathan has a deep desire to tell great stories that have the power to change lives, inspire hearts, and draw people back to their creator. Nathan does this by writing and producing movies about faith, family, and redemption. Something our world desperately needs more of right now. Which is why I am so excited to tell you about Nathan's new film project...

The film he's making is called Bright Sky. It's a modern faith-based western, taking place in a small town, following a single mother, a young boy, and an outlaw, each reaching for redemption. The movie is filled with romance, redemption, faith, and family, the things that hearts need more of from their stories today.

But Nathan needs help in making this beautiful script into a movie, so he's created a crowdfunding page with amazing incentives/rewards to support the film like staying a night in our family home in Colorado, getting an acting lesson from Nathan himself, or even getting a line in the movie!

The world is a dark and broken place — it always has been, but now more than ever we are seeing how very needed telling good stories is. Stories have the power to change and inspire us in ways nothing else does. I hope you'll join us in this journey of bringing a good story to life that just might be the thing to help a world in need.

To support the movie and find out more about the project CLICK HERE or on the image below:

Giving Your Words: The Lifegiving Power of a Verbal Home for Family Faith Formation By Clarkson, Sally, Clarkson, Clay Buy on Amazon FOR MORE

Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app.

Leave an iTunes Review These are so important as they help our podcast reach more women with messages of encouragement.

Follow on Facebook and Instagram for the latest news and updates.

Share with others. My prayer is that this podcast brings encouragement to women and families, and I would be honored for you to tell others about it.

Join my friends and me in membership at Life with Sally, a place for me to share more teaching from the Bible and messages on education, motherhood, discipleship, and more

Building a House for Eternity

Click here to play today’s new podcast episode.

“The wise woman builds her house,
But the foolish tears it down with her own hands.”

Proverbs 14:1

A messy, casual tea with friends over hours of talking, sharing dreams, confessing inner secret thoughts, being understood, loved—that is a gift. Wish you could have joined me!

I have prayed about the priorities the Lord has for me in the years ahead, and I I still want to leave a legacy of encouraging, teaching, coming alongside mothers who are in the trenches. I still think if is some of the most profound work of life.

Many years ago, I realized that because I was a mother, I was automatically under a different set of responsibilities than my unmarried friends or my married friends who had no children. With the privilege of bearing children comes the responsibility to commit wholeheartedly to the care of those children.

As a woman who has enjoyed a career of teaching, speaking, counseling, and writing, I have had to make many difficult decisions to cut my career opportunities in order to focus on my family priorities. However, I have come to realize that embracing God's call to the duties of motherhood doesn't diminish my abilities to use my gifts, strength, and training, but fulfills a part of God's design.

Loving my children, protecting them, building them into a godly heritage is a life's work worth far more than any money or status I might find in a career. If the mother who gave her children life is not willing to do what it takes to provide security, love, protection, instruction, and stability for her own children, then who will be willing to do so? Many will be as orphans in a crowded world, longing for the security they were supposed to find in their own family.

If we want to experience a sense of wholeness to our lives: we must understand His original design. We will then have a map by which to travel toward God's destination. We need to do more than understand. We must commit to living as mothers with undivided hearts—dedicating ourselves fully to the task of building a home, nurturing our children.

Lots of fun on Tea Time Tuesday today—children’s books, music, a brunch menu, a fun story—So glad to have you join me.

Minding Our Minds

Click here to play today’s new podcast episode.

What if someone could read your thoughts—would you like what they see?

Worship the Lord Your God with all of your mind, we are told.

I call it “minding your mind” because thinking, learning, understanding, creating—so many things we do with our minds, are to be a focus of our worship of God. Worshipping God with our mind requires a focus, intentionality, effort, a plan.

"As a man thinks, so is he." Proverbs. 23:7

Often we think of worship as singing, praising and lifting our arms up to God. But to worship God means to honor Him and to place Him as our lens of focus through which we see and live all of our lives.

Filling our minds with truth, pondering Christ, cherishing that which is holy is a part of this worship. God admonishes us to "delight ourselves in His law." Psalm 1; to hide His word in our hearts and minds; to think true thoughts.

We are told to think only on those things which are worthy of Him:

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."

Philippians 4:8

What we eat, we become—so it is with food for thought, what we consume determines what we think, how we behave. What do you feed your every day? Are you reading noble stories? Filling your mind with God's word? With truth? Rejecting thoughts that lead you to bitterness, strife or worldliness?

We are destroying arguments and all arrogance raised against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ,

II Corinthians 10: 5

Take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ--take every wrong thought and make it a prisoner who will submit.

Worshipping God with our mind takes intention, investment, time.

I have never met a deeply spiritual leader who did not think deeply, clearly and well. My spiritual mentors are those who cause me to think more highly of God. They are those who sharpen me with their ponderings of God, Christ, thoughts of eternity, truth, doctrine.

Worshipping God with our minds requires a commitment, a plan, an intention.

Join me on my podcast today for more on thoughts.

Seasons of Life

Click here to play today’s new podcast episode.

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
― Albert Camus

There were many times in my life when I would feel, “I don’t think I will make it through this season. I am not strong enough. I don’t feel like I can make it.”

But then I would make it and come out of the season into another. But as I look back now, I realize that seasons—singleness, marriage, parenting, birthing, raising children, growing older, are all seasons of life that we pass through. God even built seasons into nature as a picture to us that mirrors our real lives—Spring, a time of renewal and rebirth; Summer: a time of planting and growing; Fall: A Time of closing and change; Winter: a time of cold, barrens, roots going deep, appearance that all is gone when in actuality, deep growth is taking place.

Today, I am sharing in my public podcast a bible study I recorded this month for all of the people who are in my membership, Life With Sally. I teach a Bible study each month. (As well as legacy talks from many years of conferences, An Awaking Wonder Education focus, recipes, classical composers, traditions, printable, books for women, and soooo much more. I would be so happy to have you join me in my monthly membership because it is a wonderful community of women gathered together for inspiration and discipleship.

Hope it encourages you today.

But remember, whatever season you find yourself in is eventually going to pass. But God is aware of your season and He will give you wisdom, strength, grace to walk through the seasons with Him by your side to provide you with insight and understanding into the ways he is working in the world.

What season are you in right now? I pray you will find hope wherever you find yourself. Praying for you all.

Tea Time Tuesday: Our Dwelling Shapes Us

Click here to play today’s new podcast episode.

We shape our dwellings and afterwords, our dwellings shape us.

Winston Churchill

October always thrills me to my toes. Each year, a walk amongst rustling leaves, a slight chill in the air, books read outlaid, meals shared, extended teatimes—all have given me pleasure for so long, it still sings joy in my heart to think of it.

* I hope you will plan to make special memories with your friends, neighbors, children, spouses this month. In many parts of the nation—and certainly in our little corner of Colorado—autumn is the time when the temperatures drop and a chill is felt in the air.

*What fun I had being whisked away with some friends (Paris and northern UK) for an afternoon of chatting and catching up in the lovely Cotswolds, a collection of towns with off-white stone walls queried from the local hills. Cotswold means Hills with Sheep. And that is what you see—-grassy hills with lazy sheep grazing and munching their dinner. My friend gave me a lovely little box of tea from Paris to sip after they left—and guess what?! It was blue—as you can see in the photo above. You’ll have to listen to my podcast to find out what makes it blue—and to hear another of my new favorite teas. It was quite light and refreshing.

*For many years, Clay and I have built our deep companionship over hours of shared cups of tea and sharing hearts, dreams, burdens, and life. I had you peek into our own shared memory because it has lent to us growing closer over years, one cup of tea at a time.

Curling up together on the long cold nights often found the Clarksons reading an epic tale together. One that you must read at some point is A Tale of Two Cities, both historical and literature tied into one tale.

You will love Music for the Lifegiving Home by Joel Clarkson to spread lovely music through your rooms.

A Taco Train (or Tostado Train) is what I am feeding groups in my home this month.

More thoughts of things that make your home a happy one.

When the places inside home are intentionally crafted, these seasons can become the places where memories can be shaped and stored forever. Grace to you. Tell me what is happening in your world.

The Grace of Aging Well

Click here to play today’s new podcast episode.

My beautiful, huge tree took decades to grow strong and tall. Storms, drought, many seasons it was in the making. 

“Though youths grow weary and stumble, tired, and vigorous young men stumble badly, yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary” (Isaiah 40:30-31)

Isaiah tells us that when we are young, we stumble, grow weary. When I was young, I was guessing at how to live life well. With each child, each year of marriage, and each year of work, I grew stronger little by little in faith, relationships, work, wisdom, and life. I learned that struggling does not have to define my whole life. Evidently, it was common even in ancient history for younger in life to strain towards flourishing, to seek to come up with answers, to live into ideals while stumbling.

There are many gifts of aging, gaining experience. It comes from waiting, learning, storing up experience and understanding. Yet, our culture is not inclined to appreciate the value of age or the richness of wisdom in contrast to choosing over-confidence and cleverness of youth. Those who have grown older through many years of ideals and trials, yet held fast to God, even in the darkness, have bought for their toil, perspective, wisdom and humility, gentleness.

The older one becomes, the more one understands how little power or control we have over life, circumstances and relationships. The understanding of fighting and scrambling for the things of this world, seeking to make life tame its raging storms, shaking our fist at heaven, becomes futile to one who is focusing more on eternity.

The gift of aging wisely is humility, gentleness and patience. Humility, because of a realization of how finite we are, how much we need and depend on God's grace for our very life; gentleness, because we are ourselves in such need of gentle compassion and love from others in our own frailty; patience, because we have learned that nothing happens on our time schedule, but that in the end, God is good.

These gifts are only for those who determine to chase after Him, who hold fast, even in darkness, who choose to believe when they cannot see.

Living a Story That holds a Legacy

Click here to play today’s new podcast episode.

“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
― G.K. Chesterton

I would love to have this little lamp—isn’t it the best?

As I sit in my warm, candlelit kitchen/sitting room, sipping my tea, I was pondering what it is that keeps one going forward in the battle of life. Chesterton gets it right. We are willing to fight for what is right, give our time to the training of human souls to teach them the stories to hold on to, and staying steadfast because we have loved and tasted the goodness that life was meant to hold.

Seems that life is flying by again for me during this season. As I watch the leaves rain softly to the ground, and the colors give their last bit of glory before disappearing into a pile on the ground, I am reminded that my own life is reflecting seasons. I want to take advantage of this time to its fullest that I may have been a good soldier in this battle between darkness and light and left a bit of the glory and light I have known.

Chesterton also said something else that is one of my philosophies for children:

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
― G.K. Chesterton.

Part of my goals with my family was to realize that they would have a part in the slaying of dragons in their world and to cultivate the imagination that dragons could be slain.

Teatime Tuesday this week has a lovely colorful salad recipe, an interesting movie, a thought about Angela Lansbury’s life, a favorite children’s book, a new tea I have loved and a grand story of how God was working through a great story behind the scenes and showed His hand in surprising ways.

Much of our dragon-slaying takes place in obscure moments, hidden training to face the battle, times to learn just what the goodness is that is worth giving our lives to—but we are warriors nonetheless.

Praying for you, my sweet friends, that you may have strength, mercy and grace for your life today. Take time to enjoy and breathe in peace—make it a habit—”life is indeed a long obedience in the same direction.”

Freedom! From Bondage to A Life of Joy

Click here to play today’s new podcast episode.

In almost everything that touches our everyday life on earth, God is pleased when we're pleased. He wills that we be as free as birds to soar and sing our maker's praise without anxiety.

- A. W. Tozer

Words have the power to shape our vision for life, to open wide our understanding of God’s nature, to motivate us in our life-long goals. Words have power. I am so excited about this week’s word: Freedom.

Drawing unique designs for my little granddaughter Lilian is what she often wants me to do.

“Draw me something with patterns that I can color in!!”

And so I drew a whole page full of differently sized triangles with borders around them so she could color the outsides in different colors.

“Oh, good job, Queenie. I just love the way you draw.”

I am so happy when my sweet one is happy—it is my delight to please her and see her respond to my own love. It is what Tozer said, God is pleased when we are pleased and wants us to be free as birds!

This week’s word, freedom, is very biblical and soooo wonderfully encouraging—such a profound Biblical word to understand and live by.

Freedom in a biblical sense means: emancipation, the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved

We do not have to be slaves to our shame, our failures, our weakness. We have been emancipated, let out of guilty land, because of His work. Just look at some of these verses:

Romans 8: 2: For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.

Galatians 5:13 : For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love.

II Cor. 3: 17: Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

Jesus opened his ministry with this reading from Isaiah, (Luke 4:18): "The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free,

Great news indeed!

May this week’s podcast encourage you to your toes.

Giving Your Words: The Lifegiving Power of a Verbal Home for Family Faith Formation By Clarkson, Sally, Clarkson, Clay Buy on Amazon FOR MORE

Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast app.

Leave an iTunes Review These are so important as they help our podcast reach more women with messages of encouragement.

Follow on Facebook and Instagram for the latest news and updates.

Share with others. My prayer is that this podcast brings encouragement to women and families, and I would be honored for you to tell others about it.

Join my friends and me in membership at Life with Sally, a place for me to share more teaching from the Bible and messages on education, motherhood, discipleship, and more!

Launch Day! Giving Your Words!

Click here to play today’s new podcast episode.

WooHoo! Launch Day is here.

Today, Giving Your Words is officially out in the world. Many of you have asked Clay to join me in an interview about our book. So today, we have a special podcast for you together about how Giving Your Words came about—from his perspective. I loved recording this together because some of the keys to our own wisdom in mentoring our children came out in the conversation. I hope it will greatly encourage you. And it might just be the podcast you and your husband could listen to together.

Clay and I will be together on an Insta live today, 10/18, at 7:00 pm London time (1 pm Central, 2pm Eastern, 12pm Mountain, 11am Pacific). I hope you will join us.

Also, be sure to enter into the giveaway of a tea time zoom call with me! We will be giving some books away, too! (For those who have entered on Sallyclarkson.com on the Giving Your Words book page, you are already entered for the graphic posters and Words prompts as well as the giveaway.)

To enter the giveaway through any of my social media platforms, just tag a friend in the comments and you will be entered.

Please get your own copy of Giving Your Words! We hope it will be of great encouragement to you.

Baker Books has already sold out of their stock, but you can other stores are just now able to send out from their warehouses—Amazon, Barnes and Noble, ChristianBook.com, Lifeway, Half-price books, etc.

Our hope is that parents all over the world will become even more skillful at leaving their children a legacy of words and messages giving hope, foundational faith, unconditional love and painting a vision for a lifetime.

Thanks to everyone who has been helping me get this book into the world! Blessings and blessings to all of you, my friends.

See you soon.

Giving Your Words: The Lifegiving Power of a Verbal Home for Family Faith Formation By Clarkson, Sally, Clarkson, Clay Buy on Amazon

Giving Your Words: An Interview with Clay Clarkson

Click here to play today’s new podcast episode.

Launch week for our newest book, Giving Your Words, is upon us. Many of you have asked Clay to join me in an interview about our book. So today and tomorrow, we have a special podcast for you together about how Giving Your Words came about—from his perspective. I loved recording this together because some of the keys to our own wisdom in mentoring our children came out in the conversation. I hope it will greatly encourage you. And it might just be the podcast you and your husband could listen to together.

Clay and I will be together on an Insta live tomorrow at 7:00 pm London time, Tuesday night, 1 O’clock Central, 2 Eastern, 12 Mountain, 11 Pacific. I hope you will join us.

Also, be sure to enter into the giveaway of a tea time zoom call with me—and include 6 friends with you and a fun tea time package to help your party along. We just might be giving some books away, too! For those who have entered on Sallyclarkson.com on the Giving Your Words book page, you are already entered for the graphic posters and Words prompts as well as the giveaway. If you have not signed up on that page, leave a comment here and tag a friend and you will be entered! Share abroad! And be sure to snag a copy of the book for yourself. Baker Books has already sold out of their stock, but you can other stores are just now able to send out from their warehouses—Amazon, Barnes and Noble, ChristianBook.com, Lifeway, Half-price books, etc. You can connect on my website SallyClarkson.com

Our hope is that parents all over the world will become even more skillful at leaving their children a legacy of words and messages giving hope, foundational faith, unconditional love and painting a vision for a lifetime.

Thanks for everyone who has been helping me get this book into the world! Blessings and blessings to all of you, my friends.

Giving Your Words: The Lifegiving Power of a Verbal Home for Family Faith Formation By Clarkson, Sally, Clarkson, Clay Buy on Amazon