Deanna Doss Shrodes

These are my new $3 Walmart sunglasses that I recently purchased on sale. It's the little things, ya know. 
A few days ago I needed to run a quick errand. I hopped in my husband's car instead of mine because of where it was parked in the driveway. Traveling down the road headed toward the sun I reached for the place where I normally grab my sunglasses in my car. I realized my husband had no sunglasses in his car. I squinted and held my hand up, lamenting that the sun was in my eyes most of the way there and back.  I was talking to myself and really didn't care if anyone noticed.

As I returned from my errand and turned the corner onto our street, I touched my head and suddenly realized that my sunglasses had been there the whole time. I had taken a bike ride that morning and when I came inside the house, I  pushed my sunglasses on top of my head and forgot about them.
The point is this. Sometimes we complain about the lack of something and fail to realize, we've had i…

Driving along on my journey to preach in Wauchula last week, I came upon this sign. As I often do when traveling and I pass something I want to capture, I stopped to take a photo.

Mothers set the temperature in the home.

We are the thermostat.

Whatever our mood, it impacts the whole household like no other person in the house.

While we set the tone, I believe we are also the person in the home who faces the most circumstances with the potential to affect our mood. No one cares about the state of the home more than we do. So, when everything falls apart or piles up, it impacts us like no one else.  None of my other family members seem to notice or care when this happens. But I personally experience a cloud of depression so real I can almost touch it when things aren't right at home.  It's even worse when I clean up the night before and after I go to bed someone messes it up.  I have found if I don't start playing worship music and begin to pray and seek the Lord for stre…

Many people have asked me this question. The answer is...

I didn’t want to get out of bed or brush my teeth.
I was so broken emotionally, it hurt to breathe.
My upper body was in such pain that I rubbed it constantly. As I spoke to people I would cross my hands over my body and knead my shoulders, back, neck and arms over and over again - not caring about how bizarre it must have looked. (No one can ever tell me that emotional injury doesn't manifest in one's body.)

I could have cared less about appearances. If people thought I was a freak, so be it. I was so terribly wounded and quite frankly at a dangerous place. I was close to checking in to a hospital. I really don't know what stopped me.

A visit to a Christian therapist revealed I was suffering from complex trauma, significant loss and complicated grief.

In the midst of my suffering, I blogged for catharsis. I didn't care about prettying anything up. Quite a number of people read all of the anguish I poured out. Maybe i…

"I'm sorry I dropped the ball, but I've got something going on..."

I've heard this excuse too many times to count in leadership. And here's a question I have to anyone who offers this up as a reason for not fulfilling a responsibility...

When don't you have something going on?

There will never be a time when you don't have at least one challenge in your life.

I look at every  person on the leadership team I serve with and I can name something big (and stressful) that each one of them has going on. It could be a financial hardship, a son or daughter getting married, a grandchild on the way, an illness, a church conflict, a marriage issue or a myriad of other things.

Every time I get up to preach I could truthfully say, "Bear with me folks, I have _________________ going on."

But I don't. 

Leaders who desire to produce over the long haul need to come to terms with the reality that they will ALWAYS have something going on. And if you let …

What a child learns to believe by age thirteen, they will die believing. That's what research by the Barna Research Group shows, about the majority of people. Yesterday I preached a message at our church for Mother's Day about the need for spiritual parenting. If the majority of our kids are making a decision by the age of thirteen, we'd better be about the Father's business. It takes more than just any kind of village or any kind of people to raise children for God. Spiritual  parenting requires Godly moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles, and Christian adults in general.

The need is great. Did you know that sixty-four percent of decisions are made for Christ before the age of eighteen and seventy-seven percent are made before the age of twenty-one?(Source: Barna Research Group)

Those statistics should light a fire under us! We must spiritually parenting our own children, and care about reaching as many others as possible.

To spiritually parent requires takin…