It’s the Valentine’s Day issue of KK’s Candor. For the younger version of me, Valentine’s Day was heart-warming feelings of hopeful romance. Most of the time the day ended with a twinge of disappointment. I survived, and I had my Valentine’s Day where there was no disappointment.
Our friends in the greeting card, #candy, and #jewelry industries have put pressure on the men in our lives to buy big. Let me help you out fellas. Before the stuffed animals, greeting cards, or jewelry your relationship may not be ready for, give us your heart. Be genuine.
I love picturing my husband in the card aisle choosing a card for me. In those moments he’s seeking a message from his heart to mine. But the words I focus on are the ones he writes above his name at the bottom of the card. Those are the words that I know come straight from his heart.
Yes, there’s usually a small sweet treat with the card. Nothing over the top. Just him taking a few minutes to buy a card, and my favorite candy. Don’t get me wrong, jewelry is welcome anytime, as long as it’s the right time.
Share a little love with someone this year. Maybe buy a box of those #valentines we had in grade school and fill them out for your friends at work, school, or church.
From my heart to yours,
KK
Scheduling for your book club in 2025? Check out Curtains for Maggie, a wonderfully encouraging novel about rediscovering personal passions. Contact me about leading your discussion.
There is a school of thought that is concerned with why animals suffer. They don’t sin like humans, yet they are burdened with living in a predatory world. To set the context for this post, I am a creationist. I believe that #God created the heavens and the earth and all that lives within both. He created the world in a mature state. Trees were full grown and produced food (Gen.1:11-12), and the first man was created as an adult (consider this when you’re trying to decide how old the earth is). I will also add that I believe that humans are just as much a part of creation/nature as plants, trees, animals, and insects; each having a purpose and responsibility to the whole. My reference will be Genesis 1 – 3.
We read about the whole #creation, and then the passage focuses on one area – the garden. The picture is described as lush and abundant with animals, vegetation, Adam and Eve. Man was created last and given the job of caring for the garden. Like all the other creatures, he was given a mate, a partner, Eve, to do life with. At this point, the creation is described by God as “very good.” Adam and Eve were given one rule, don’t eat for the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Genesis 2:17, says “…but from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.” Notice that he doesn’t say that IF you eat of it, he says THE DAY THAT YOU EAT FROM IT. God knew what was going to happen. Did he set us up to fail? What does this have to do with the animals suffering? Spoiler alert – woman and man eat the fruit of the tree. While I’d like to take a deep dive into who’s to blame, let’s stick to our point of how this impacts animals.
God placed in the soul of humans the ability to reason and make choices, otherwise, we’d just be puppets. It’s out of our choices that we journey either toward or away from God. When Eve and Adam ate the forbidden fruit, it set in motion humankind’s separation from God at the same time our journey back to Him. It also began the demise of the world. (Go ahead and hum, it’s the end of the world as we know it…)
When sin entered the perfect creation, it destroyed what was perfect for all of creation. The plants we need to grow for food or beauty must survive dramatic weather along with thorns and thistles in order to produce fruit. Many species of animals will hunt or be hunted. And mankind, well, look around, unfortunately, we don’t have to look far to find depravity.
Remember the warning was that when they ate from the tree, they would die. But they didn’t die immediately. I believe two things happen here. First, the broken rule began the deterioration of man, the ticking biological clock, so to speak. Our lives on earth became finite. The second thing we see God do is shed blood to provide for man and woman clothing (3:21). In the midst of discipline, He shows compassion and makes provision.
He drew the first blood. This began the pattern of shedding blood for the covering of our sins. The cadence of blood sacrifice for forgiveness is threaded through the Old Testament. In the New Testament, God drew the last blood through the sacrifice of His son, Jesus (John 3:16).
In Genesis 3:14 – 19, God doles out the consequences for their disobedience. He begins with the serpent through which the curse of sin is placed on cattle and every beast of the field. (v. 14 NASB). It is my opinion that this is when animals became predatory. Prior to the curse, Genesis 2:30 says the green plants were to be eaten by all. Chapter 3 changes everything – the ground now is cursed with thistles and thorns making Adam’s work harder. Animals are cursed, and the serpent is put on his belly to eat dust. Eve will experience the pain of childbirth, and her relationship with her husband will be challenging. Humans are ashamed (3:10), the first of many emotions that can steal our joy.
Do animals suffer because of humans? I guess it depends on who you blame for the original sin, the serpent or Eve. At this point, does it matter who to blame? God has given us the roadmap for reconnection after sin – be it sinning against each other, or Him. Nowhere in Genesis did God change our job to care for creation. We are still the highest form of creation and still responsible for taking care of it.
Everyone suffered at the fall of creation, animals included. Sad but true.
All the best,
KK
Let’s connect. If you haven’t already, please choose to follow KK’s Candor. To stay in touch with my writing adventures you can find me on social media.
Scheduling for your book club in 2025? Check out Curtains for Maggie, a wonderfully encouraging novel about rediscovering personal passions. Contact me about leading your discussion.
Are you living a 72-degree existence? How easy is it when we work remotely, have garage door openers, and can order just about anything delivered to our door, never to experience getting cold or hot or even dodge rain drops. Are we living a sterile existence? Are we creating a vanilla life?
Now that working from home has become somewhat of a norm, it’s possible to spend your days in the comfort of your home where your biggest pain point is a late delivery of groceries. #Doctors will even do video appointments. There are no freezing fingertips or frizzy humidity hair. But there’s also no interaction with humanity; no colorful characters to spice up our day. Every day looks the same because your view never changes.
Are the senses dulled by not experiencing the robust odors of a restaurant or the icky odors of a sewer grate? It’s not unlike when you’ve given up chocolate, #coffee, or soda for Lent. Remember that first taste after the 40-day fast? The flavor is bold, and the carbonation in your soda almost burns your mouth (I’m not a coffee drinker so I have no idea about that experience). You get the idea.
Modern conveniences are wonderful and certainly make much of life easier. But can we agree that bubble-wrapping our lives removes so much of its flavor? The discomfort of sweating is quickly forgotten with the plunge into a #swimming pool. The extremes of life remind us that we are alive. Embrace them! Let them stretch and grow you as an individual. Let them be what molds and changes you over time.
All the best,
KK
Let’s connect. If you haven’t already, please choose to follow KK’s Candor. To stay in touch with my writing adventures you can find me on social media.
Scheduling for your book club in 2025? Check out Curtains for Maggie, a wonderfully encouraging novel about rediscovering personal passions. Contact me about leading your discussion.
I’ve started thinking of time in relative terms. As an author with a full-time career, I’m intentional about my #writing #time. While it’s wonderful when I have entire days on a weekend to write, I’m often grabbing a few hours in the evening or an hour at lunch to bang out a few paragraphs. It’s easy to feel defeated when you think a novel is over eighty thousand words and I’m picking at it an hour here or there. Like other monumental tasks, it’s imperative to take it one word, one sentence, one paragraph at a time. In doing so, the book will be completed.
The longest I can sit and write productively on a novel is about five or six hours. What could you accomplish in six hours? Let’s look at a typical evening. If you’re home from work by six in the evening, you have dinner, settle into your evening by seven, and you go to bed at eleven. Assuming you don’t have chores like house cleaning or laundry, you have four free hours. You could drive from Kentucky to Georgia in four hours. Other things that could be done in four hours include painting a small room, running a couple of marathons, or assembling furniture for the living room.
Let’s look at time from the other side, what if you only have an hour, what could you accomplish? A workout, fold and put away laundry, pick up the house, or make a home-cooked dinner are among a few things that could be accomplished in an hour. Writing this post will take me about an hour but will hopefully have you thinking for many hours.
The next time you think you don’t have enough time to complete something on your list, think about that hour, or two, or four, whatever you have free, and add a little perspective. What can I complete or move toward completion in the time that I have?
All the best,
KK
Let’s connect. If you haven’t already, please choose to follow KK’s Candor. To stay in touch with my writing adventures you can find me on social media.
The image outside my window is not one of the new beginnings #January brings. Definitely not the vision of renewal or a fresh start. My garden is hibernating. It’s cold and I’d like to join those in nature that hunker down until Spring.
Centuries ago, March 25th was the beginning of our #calendar year. That makes sense. The beginning of spring. The rebirth of flowers, blossoms on trees…the renewing feeling of a warm sun. What happened?
Thank you Roman king Numa Pompilius. According to tradition, during his reign (c. 715–673 BCE) Numa revised the Roman republican calendar so that January replaced March as the first month in honor of Janus, the Roman god of all beginnings. There is evidence that January 1 was not made the official start of the Roman year until 153 BC. (source: Britannica) And then came Julius Caesar…
There are two reasons for asking this question. First are the things I mentioned above. From our part of the world, January doesn’t scream “NEW BEGINNINGS.” The other thought is to pose the question, how accurate is our holistic tracking of time and dates? This article demonstrates that tracking years shifted by three months, a quarter of a year just got shifted at the whim of some Roman king. Not to mention how many leap years we missed before those began to be tracked.
Why do we accept our calendar as accurate?
Things that make you go hummm.
KK.
Let’s connect. If you haven’t already, please choose to follow KK’s Candor. To stay in touch with my writing adventures you can find me on social media.
A few days before Christmas the doctor ordered an MRI on my left ankle. For months I had experienced swelling and a limited range of motion. Long story, short, the scan results showed a small tear in a ligament. To help it heal, I’ll wear a soft-cast for six weeks. Six weeks to hopefully avoid surgery. Wearing the soft-cast is clunky and at times uncomfortable. My car is a manual, so I have to shift gears to not driving, or limited driving my husband’s car. Oh, and the boot is taller than any of my shoes. I’m not good at being less than one hundred percent healthy. I get a little fussy. We’ve had a major snow (about 10”), making going outside challenging. My wings have been clipped.
Recently, I have had several conversations about suffrage. What is the purpose of suffering? Be it a six-week inconvenience of hobbling around, and thumping up and down steps, to the suffering of those who are plagued with much longer-lasting pain and inconvenience. On either side of suffering, what is its purpose? Lessons to last a lifetime.
I’m a week into this challenge. So far, I’ve learned that if I stand up straighter, my gate isn’t as gimpy. Interesting idea, standing up straighter when the burden is pulling you down. A straighter posture helps me feel more control over my challenge. I am stronger overall than my ankle feels now. Do we let one burden steal the strength of so many other blessings? Is this an opportunity for me to decide how I will react to a challenge instead of letting the challenge itself control my attitude?
Is this an opportunity to slow down? I’ve just had two restful holiday weeks off work. Why did the ligament in my leg fail now? Truth is, it failed months ago, and I chose to ignore it. Perhaps this suffrage gives me the opportunity to not rush into the new year. How guilty we are at looking forward so much that we don’t see what today holds. We rush time. We wish our way to what’s next to the point where we can’t pay attention to this day, this hour, or this minute.
I’ve been given six weeks to slowly begin 2025. My caution is to not waste the slowness. Clunking around in this boot is tiresome. I’ll embrace resting more. But I won’t become lazy. May we all embrace Winter slowness to savor time and embrace what each season offers. Spring with it’s renewal of life, Summer full of sunshine, and colorful Fall.
Would love your thoughts.
KK
Let’s connect. If you haven’t already, please choose to follow KK’s Candor. To stay in touch with my writing adventures you can find me on social media.
January 1, 2023 was the last time I drank a full-bodied, all the calories, and wonderful bubble-laced goodness of Coca-Cola. For years my doctor had told me that one Coke a day equated to five pounds added a year. That is assuming you’re not out working off the sugar in some sweaty workout session, which I was not. I made the switch to Diet Coke.
I had hit the point that many women my age hit, when metabolism retires, and weight moves in. I was tired of looking in the mirror to have no waistline reflected. Long-term hypertension was knocking on the door. I was too young not to feel sassy and good about my looks. By the way, my feelings about my body were not coming from societal messages, or from my beloved husband. Any time I groused about my weight, he would tap at my heart and remind me that he loved me from the heart.
So, I drew a line in the sand, signed up for Weight Watchers, and began the journey to better health through shedding some weight. In no way have I been militant about it. We’ve eaten well on vacations and enjoyed treats along the way. I’m not sweating to the oldies, although that should be my next step to escalate the results I’m seeing.
I began with one decision, two if you include the #WW membership. Every day, every choice I make on what to eat is now made with two things in mind, my health/weight goal, and how many points I have to spend.
Back to the Diet Coke switch. Now that it’s been over a year since I had a Coke, there are times when even Diet Coke tastes sweet. When that happens, I ask my husband to taste it. With a cringed face he hands it back to me, “Yep, that’s diet.” Funny how your taste can change. In college, my breakfast pretty much every day was a Dr. Pepper and Snickers bar on my way to barely getting to class on time. The thought of it today brings the feeling of a brick in my stomach.
I have hit one of my first weight goals (Yay me!). But my overall health isn’t what I want it to be, so there is continued work to be done. There are new choices around this change that I need to make. Going into eating and cookie season, those choices may be difficult. Goals worth achieving are worth sacrificing for.
When have you had to draw a line in the sand and say, “It’s time for a change.” Is there some way I can support or encourage you in that decision? Let me know.
All the best,
KK
Let’s connect. If you haven’t already, please choose to follow KK’s Candor. To stay in touch with my writing adventures you can find me on social media.
In the early 1900’s, my grandparents were married. He worked for the railroad. Our country was coming out of World War 1 (#WW1) about the time they got married. Living in rural Eastern Kentucky, they had 12 living children and 3 stillborn babies during the Depression. They had no idea what the world was going to hand them. So, Papaw went to work every day and Mamaw planted a garden, kept chickens, and raised the children. On Sundays, they went to church. They worked hard, controlled the controllables and they recognized that there was something bigger than them watching over and providing.
In the 1950’s, my parents were married. Dad had come back from World War 2 (#WW2), finished college, and got a job. He and mom got married. Their generation dealt with civil unrest, the war in #Vietnam (and the protests that ensued), and one of the first big controversies in Washington, Watergate. News was on television every night, and in the newspapers each day. There weren’t influencers or a web of opinions spewed at them all day. They had no idea what the world was going to deliver. But they had children, and they worked hard. They controlled the controllables.
When 911 happened, my generation was shaken. Not since Pearl Harbor had we seen such a direct enemy attack. We were raised to believe they couldn’t breach our border. The US joined the war in Iraq. It began a new way of thinking about the world around us. If I had thought too much about it, I would have been scared. But I refused to live in fear. I went to work to continue to build a life. I controlled the controllable, and I put my faith in someone bigger.
Every generation has experienced what they felt was a crazy world with so many unpredictable things. It’s our choice how we choose to react and move forward. We work to be productive and provide for our families, control what we can, and leave the rest to faith. In doing so, we can have joy each day while living in this crazy world, and peace in our hearts for what’s beyond.
Your thoughts?
All the best,
Karen
Let’s connect. If you haven’t already, please choose to follow KK’s Candor. To stay in touch with my writing adventures you can find me on social media.
Based on this definition (and not the context I heard the term), I can agree with it, for the most part. Finding the root cause of something happening (work not being delivered) can provide “lessons learned” to improve a process. However, outside of a purely automated situation, part of the root cause analysis of a process needs to be the people involved.
Having been a people leader, it was my job to ensure my team had what they needed to do their job well–equipment, time, and access to resources. A block in these things prohibits a strong team member from delivering on their work objective. If I fail to provide, they fail to deliver. I would take the blame, not push it off. If a team member has everything they need to deliver, and they don’t, that’s on them. Not me. Not the process.
Terms like #blamelessculture are a cautionary tale. We live in an imperfect world with fallible people. When things go wrong, it’s easy to point a finger of blame to circumstances or other people. There comes a time to own our part in the failure. If the process doesn’t work, whoever owns it, is responsible. Find yourself in an impossible situation where the process is preventing your success? Find the things you can own, you can control, and adjust. Own your part of the solution and don’t just blame the process. We can’t just sit back, throw up our hands, and blame the process.
Think about computers. If the functions of a computer aren’t set up correctly, the computer won’t produce what the user needs. In the early days of computing, we used the term, “garbage in, garbage out.” The code, formulas, and information had to be correct for the result to be correct.
Maybe the process is broken. Blaming a process isn’t going to make it better. Find the owner, or take ownership and make it better for the next time.
Just a thought,
KK
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There are more options when buying blue #jeans than when buying a car. After eleven months of Weight Watchers, it was time for me to treat myself to a smaller size pair of blue jeans. It’s been several years since I purchased jeans. Trends have changed and the options have grown.
I’ll start with the waist. I found super high-rise, high-rise, high-rise mom jeans (there’s a selling point, NOT), mid-rise, low-rise, and super low-rise. I don’t like high-rise jeans. They come up to my belly button when I’m standing and scooch higher when I sit. That helped me eliminate three options. And I’m not young enough or skinny enough for low-rise. There’s two more options eliminated. That left me with mid-rise, just below my belly button. Great, one decision was made.
Now we need to consider the cut. The options were regular, boyfriend, skinny, super-skinny, curvy (another great marketing tool, tell the woman she’s curvy as if she didn’t know), and loose cut. I tend to be regular to skinny, but I like my jeans longer.
Before we head off to the fitting room, there is one more decision to make the bottom of the leg cut. There is boot cut, flare, straight leg, skinny, super #skinny, and welcome back from the 70’s, bell bottoms. I’m typically a straight-leg person, but if the rest of the options work, I could go skinny.
So, off I went to the fitting room with mid-rise jeans of different designers in regular cut, straight and skinny legs. Did I mention that every designer has their own interpretation of all of these options? That’s right, I took seven pairs of jeans to the fitting room and came out with one that worked. I’d like credit for the workout I got putting on and taking off seven pairs of jeans. The real win came when I found out they were half off. Half off! I bought two of the exact same pair. I tried to find other shades of blue or colors, but that sent my head reeling into another dimension of options – dark blue, stone-washed, holes, no holes. It’s a thing.
By the way, I’m from the generation that wore jeans until they got holes in them. We didn’t buy jeans with ready-made holes. The holes in our jeans told a story of the places we’d gone and the things we’d done in our jeans.
There you have it. In two outings shopping, a total of four hours of my life in the last few days was spent on safari in multiple retail stores, hunting, gathering, and trying on blue jeans.
What’s your favorite style, cut, and designer of blue jeans?
All the best,
KK.
Is your book club planning for 2024? Consider Curtains for Maggie! Available on Amazon.
And please follow me on social media @KHRAuthor on Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter).
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