Last Sunday I co-hosted my church's online worship and conversation as usual. Everything went smoothly, but afterward I felt agitated and stressed out. Not because of any technical glitches. Not because of anything anyone said or did. Not because I was thinking about anything in particular. But just because. Life is stressful. The last few years … Continue reading 5 Five-Minute Strategies to De-Stress
Lift Every Voice: Contemplative Writers of Color is a new book club launched this year by Abbey of the Arts. What a delight to learn that Four Gifts had been chosen as the feature title for May! And as a resource for the book club, I loved talking with the Abbey's Christine Valters Paintner and … Continue reading Lift Every Voice: Four Gifts
"Maybe having your husband home from the hospital will be a Christmas gift for you." "Then it better be an early Christmas present!" I thought to myself. In that respect, Christmas did come early for us this year, for after six weeks in the hospital, my husband has now been home for over two weeks. That's truly … Continue reading Reducing Holiday Loneliness During a Pandemic
Twelve days ago my husband had a medical emergency, and while he does feel better now, he is still in the hospital hooked up to various medical things, waiting for more tests and next steps. Any medical emergency is hard, and even harder in a pandemic. In our case, COVID-19 protocols kept us from seeing … Continue reading Make Haste to Help Us, O God
I always intended to put together a study guide for Four Gifts: Seeking Self-Care for Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength, and at long last, the Four Gifts Study Guide is DONE!!! One reason that this guide has been so long in coming is that there are plenty of questions already included in Four Gifts. The … Continue reading Free Self-Care Study Guide
In 2016 I wrote How to Pray for a Wedding Dinner, and it became my most viewed post in 2016---and in 2017, 2018, and now again in 2019. In fact, half of my most viewed posts in 2019 are posts from previous years and are all part of my How to Pray series. When I … Continue reading The Top 10 of 2019 from April Yamasaki
What is the Christian perspective of self-care?, asks Amelia Warkentin in her award-winning speech for the C. Henry Smith Oratorical Contest. I love the way she frames her answer with her own experience, research, and reflection on Scripture, including her reading of my book, Four Gifts: Seeking Self-care for Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength. It's an … Continue reading Finding Peace Through Self-Care
I did a double-take when I first read the title, The Radical Pursuit of Rest---isn't "pursuit" the opposite of "rest"? Author John Koessler definitely sparked my interest, and his subtitle added to the intrigue: Escaping the Productivity Trap. In his introduction, Koessler says that while his book contains practical suggestions on how we might pursue … Continue reading Enter to Win a Free Copy of The Radical Pursuit of Rest
April Yamasaki 