Beth K. Vogt's Blog, page 25
February 7, 2018
In Others’ Words: The Power of Doing Good
Power is often thought of as the ability to act or to do something. Adjust that idea a bit, and power becomes the ability to make others do what you want them to do.
Power causes change … both good and bad.
Power influences other … for both benevolent and evil people’s purposes.
And, let’s be honest here: people want power. Even in our little corner of the world, we all have things we want to do. (Check out that first definition of power again.) And some of us, most likely all of us, have some ability to make others do what we want them to do.
Here comes the what if.
What if we adopted the definition of power found in today’s quote?
“Power is the ability to do good things for others.”
Now that perspective on power will turn your world, my world … everyone’s world … upside down. And you know what? We all have that power at our very fingertips today. Right now. We don’t have to learn how to do good for others. Ever heard of the Golden Rule? “Do to others what you would have them do to you.” (Matthew 7:12c NIV)
Think of how you would like someone to be good to you — and then stop thinking about yourself and go do that good thing to someone else. Simple, yes? And powerful.
In Your Words: When has someone displayed the power of doing good to you? How can you live out the power of the doing good today?
The Power of Doing Good https://wp.me/p63waO-2yO #quotes #perspective
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Power is the ability to do good things for others. https://wp.me/p63waO-2yO #quotes #dogood
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February 5, 2018
In Others’ Words: Start or Finish?
I’ve watched many a volleyball game since my youngest daughter started playing back in fifth grade. I’ve got to admit, I like it when her team comes out hot, all the players fired up and ready to go, knocking the team on the other side of the net off kilter.
But I’ve learned over and over again that, while fired up starts are fun, how the team finishes makes all the difference in who wins and who loses the sets, and ultimately, the overall match.
In sports, if you start strong, you still have to finish strong to win. If you start off as the underdog, on the defensive against a team that’s playing better than you, then you have to finish better than you started — better than the other team — if you want to win.
How you finish wins the game.
The same is true for life, isn’t it? (So many lessons learned in sports are applicable to life.) You started life a certain way … a certain “who.” But here’s the question: Who are you going to be when you finish it?
That just may be one of the most important questions you ever answer.
And here’s another thought to encourage you: God says He started something good in you … and He’s going to complete it. (Philippians 1:6). God’s no quitter. He’s all about completing what He started.
What about you?
In Others’ Words: What life lesson have you learned playing sports? And do you consider yourself a starter, a finisher — or a bit of both?
In Others' Words: Start or Finish? https://wp.me/p63waO-2yA #quotes #athletics
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It's not so important who starts the game but who finishes it. https://wp.me/p63waO-2yA #JohnWooden #quotes
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January 31, 2018
In Others’ Words: Inspiring Change
My husband laughed and summed up today’s blog post in two words: Change happens.
You can’t argue with the man.
January was a month of change for me as a writer.
I started on book 2 in my Thatcher Sisters Series — always fun to develop new characters and plot a new story. “Why?” is the repeated question during this process.
I finished Revisions, a free novella for my newsletter subscribers that asks the question “What does it take to rewrite the mistakes of the past?”
I worked with Matt Jones of Jones House Creative to get my new website up. And today is launch day! I hope you take a few moments to browse around my new “home.” Matt did a beautiful job in capturing my vision for this new site.
The stained glass represents the theme of brokenness and my desire to see the beauty in the fragments in my life. God is the Master-Healer, and I trust Him to bring good out of all things. All things.
Look around and you’ll see hummingbirds, which always remind me that God loves me. Go here to read the story of how I learned that lesson.
And yes, my motto of “God’s best is often behind the door marked ‘Never'” remains because some things remain true no matter how much life changes.
2018 also marks my transition from writing contemporary romance to writing women’s fiction for Tyndale House Publishers with the release of Things I Never Told You in May. This new website reflects the change in my writing, too.
So, there you have it. Welcome, friends, to my new website. I know I’m going to like it here — and I hope you do, too.
In Others’ Words: What creative thinking have you been about lately? What ideas are inspiring change in your life?
In Others' Words: Inspiring Change https://wp.me/p63waO-2yg #quotes #change
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Creative thinking inspires ideas. Ideas inspire change. https://wp.me/p63waO-2yg #quotes #inspiration
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January 24, 2018
In Others’ Words: Where Have You Been?
Where has life taken you?
That’s not a rhetorical question.
I want to know: where has life taken you?
What geographical locations have you seen?
Cities. States. Provinces. Countries.
What mountains have you climbed or skied?
What lakes or oceans have you plunged into?
Where have you sat and watched the sun rise or set?
What place holds your heart captive, calling you back to it because you were there once, long ago, and were changed by the experience?
Years ago, before we lived in Colorado, my family lived in the panhandle of Florida — Niceville, Florida, to be exact. There are still grains of white sand in my heart. Our eight years there changed me. I learned to love hush puppies and red beans and rice and sweet, sweet tea. But I also learned what true friendship was … and I learned to live without my masks and be just Beth.
Yes, Florida became a part of me.
In Your Words: Where have you been? How has it become a part of you?
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January 22, 2018
In Others’ Words: When Story Conquers Fear
I sat across from my trusted friend Wise Guy recently and told him, “My heart seems smaller.”
Had unrelenting circumstances — mine and others’ close to me — turned me into some emotional Grinch and downsized my heart?
As I talked some and listened more, I realized that yes, fear had crept in and silenced me … that unknowingly I had fallen prey to the lie that what I felt wasn’t worth expressing.
The truth is, all stories are important. The ones we find in libraries and bookstores … and the ones we live out loud. And yes, even the sad parts, where we struggle and our souls are battered by doubts … yes, those fragments of our stories matter. If we have faith in who we are and Whose we are … and if we stay with our story within the Story, we conquer fear.
And our hearts grow bigger.
I’ve read fictional stories that have enlarged my heart … yes, yes, I have. But it’s when someone shares their real-life-this-is-who-I-am story with me that I learn what courage looks like … and learn how to face down my own fears.
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January 17, 2018
In Others’ Words: Decide What It’s About
Perspective changes everything.
As my husband and I wandered through a local park early one morning before my daughter’s day-long volleyball tournament, I paused in front of this wire bench. The surrounding trellises were mostly bare. What few leaves remained were brittle and brown. The landscape was awash in grays and browns.
And it had its own certain beauty.
As I stood there, I thought of the coming spring and summer months, when people would walk through this park and pause in front of this bench … and sit and savor the sunshine and whatever flowers and greenery had sprouted.
Change would happen … this place would become something different. No longer abandoned, but welcoming.
Sometimes life circumstances can leave us feeling abandoned. “What is” overwhelms us, leaving us bereft of any hope for what might be. At times we look in the mirror and we don’t even recognize the person staring back at us.
But now doesn’t last forever. Situations change. We change. And through the struggle — whatever season we need to get through — if we make the right choices, we can become stronger, more confident, more true to our values.
In Your Words: What it is or what it is becoming — which do you choose to focus on? Why?
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January 15, 2018
In Others’ Words: Learning to Live with Brokenness
Brokenness fascinates me.
It seems the theme of brokenness intrigues a lot of people — a lot of writers, to be specific. Elisa Morgan wrote about it in her book The Beauty of Broken. Then there’s Nancy Leigh DeMoss and Henry T. Blackaby’s Brokenness: The Heart God Revives; Finding God’s Blessings in Brokenness by Charles Stanley; and of course Ann Voskamp’s best-selling book,The Broken Way.
I admit, I resisted brokenness for a lot of years. I was fine, just fine, thank you very much. But only as I admitted I was broken beyond all pretense and beyond any self-repair was I able to allow God to be fully God in my life. Seeing myself as both broken and redeemed gave me the freedom to release the lie of perfectionism and step into the wide open space of God’s grace. (Romans 5:1-5 The Message.) And yes, I know some people don’t care for The Message version, but read this:
By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us—set us right with him, make us fit for him—we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that’s not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.
We don’t escape life unbroken. But each one of us needs to find a way to realize that’s okay. Not painless, but okay. God’s original plan for our lives got wrecked and perfection awaits us in eternity, not here and now. But His presence — His peace, His comfort, His lovingkindness — awaits us new every morning.
In Your Words: How do you feel about the word “broken,” especially when it’s applied to your life? What helps you accept the broken relationships, broken promises, broken expectations in your life?
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January 10, 2018
In Others’ Words: Choosing to Live Inside Hope
Do you know what you hope for?
We talked about life themes on Tuesday and I think what we hope for is linked to our life theme. If, as I said in the post two days ago, my life theme is relationships, than I hope for healthy relationships. Loving relationships. Life-giving relationships.
Obviously I’m talking about the capital “H”, capital “O”, capital “P”, capital “E” HOPE here — not the little wishful hoping that we toss around here and there throughout the day. Things like: I hope I get a parking space close to the store. I hope my package shows up today. I hope I have a good hair day.
But this idea of living inside what we hope for intrigues me. I love Barbara Kingsolver’s challenge to not admire hope from a distance … to not even settle for embracing hope, but to “live right in it.” Life would look different if we immersed ourselves in hope. I have to believe that discouragement and doubts and all the “I can’ts” we bombard ourselves with would dissipate if we figured out what we hoped for and then lived in that hope.
In Your Words: What do you hope for? How would life be different if you lived right in that hope?
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January 8, 2018
In Others’ Words: Finding Your Theme
Mention “theme,” and most people are transported back to English class, when the teacher asked, “What is the theme of this book?” Some of us had fun with this question about the central idea in a novel or short story or poem or play, and some of us started counting the days until summer vacation.
And then some of us … well, some of us became writers. And we ponder and talk about and wrestle with themes whenever we write a book.
But the truth is, fictional characters are not the only ones who have themes in their lives.
You have a life theme. I have a life theme. Every single person created by God — every single person! — has a central idea, or ideas, to their lives. We often go looking for this “theme” — sometimes we call it our passion, our purpose. But I think things like our passion and purpose come out of our life theme(s). Our life theme is created by the circumstances we face. The people we meet. The choices we make.
One of my life themes — based on my circumstances, my relationships, my choices — is family. My life “speaks” of family — and so does my writing. I could even broaden that theme and say one of my life themes is relationships, based on the same criteria.
In Your Words: What’s your life theme? How did you discover it?
In Others’ Words: Finding Your Theme https://wp.me/p63waO-2t0 @bethvogt #quotes #theme
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“Ultimately, your theme will find you. You don’t have to go looking for it.” via @bethvogt #theme #RichardRusso
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In Others’ Words: Finding Your Theme https://wp.me/p63waO-2t0 @bethvogt #quotes #theme
“Ultimately, your theme will find you. You don’t have to go looking for it.” via @bethvogt #theme #RichardRusso
January 3, 2018
In Others’ Words: The Power of Quotes
I have always been a word person. My mother used to say she thought I was born with a dictionary in my hands. (Now that is an odd visual.)
And I have always appreciated quotes, savoring the discovery of someone else’s way with words that makes me pause and think or even laugh out loud, thanks to their fresh perspective.
This blog? It was my second attempt at blogging — after my first blog never got off the ground. So, I shut that blog down, despite conventional wisdom back then being that writers needed to be blogging. Then, weeks later during a night of insomnia, I realized that I loved quotes enough to blog about them just because I had so much fun with them! And then I realized other people enjoy quotes, too. Next, the title “In Others’ Words” came to me. I determined to keep my posts shorts (300 words or less) and to invite conversation with my readers (the In Your Words questions). When I ran the idea past my agent, she said, “You should have insomnia more often.” And then we shared a laughed.
And quotes? Yes, they are “souls alive in ink” because they reflect other people’s hearts, their passions, their personalities. Quotes express things I feel but sometimes can’t find the right words … the best words. I find this amazing quote that says what I wanted to say. Sometimes a quote makes me stop where I am and go, “Huh!” because I hadn’t thought of that truth. Or I’d forgotten an important life principle and I needed to remember it. And yes, sometimes the quotes I read just make me laugh and appreciate being alive.
In Your Words: Just sharing what’s called “backstory” with you today. I’d love to know if you have a favorite quote or two. We’ve done this before and then I’ve had the chance to highlight them in future blogs.
In Others’ Words: The Power of Quotes https://wp.me/p63waO-2sU #quotes #perspective
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“Most collectors collect tangibles. As a quotation collector, I collect wisdom, life, invisible beauty, souls alive in ink.” https://wp.me/p63waO-2sU #quotes @quotegarden #collectors
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