Hello, Reader.

My family is vacationing this week, but will be back home before Memorial Day weekend, as my husband has been assigned to take call during that holiday this year.

I hope you'll enjoy the long weekend with loved ones but that you'll also take a few grateful moments to remember the men and women who gave their lives to purchase and preserve our freedoms. I offer this week's link list toward that end.

Free resources for you this week:

• ​Memorial Day Printables - printables, videos, and fresh ideas for honoring the fallen
• ​Military Anthems - so you can learn the lyrics for every branch of service
• ​Gettysburg Address - Lincoln's famous words in memory of soldiers slain in the Civil War
• ​In Flanders Field Poem - beautiful WW1 poem honoring the battlefield dead
• ​The Ultimate Sacrifice Coloring Page - "there is no greater love than one lay down his life...."

What I'm reading this week:

I read Follow Him this week, then lent it to my mom, who finished it in a single sitting! In this short, 124-page book, David Platt examines what it means to be a follower of Christ. He tackles such topics as faith, repentance and change, the insufficiency of works to secure our salvation, battling temptation, discerning the will of God, and more. He also warns against trying to pick and choose which teachings of Christ we'll accept and which we'll ignore: "It is impossible to follow Jesus yet disregard, discredit, and disbelieve his Word." Otherwise, Platt writes, "In the end, we create a nice, inoffensive, politically correct, middle-class, American Jesus who looks just like us and thinks just like us. But Jesus is not customizable."

On the podcast this week:

No new episode while I'm vacationing, but here's another from the archives for you:

Loving Life at Home: Episode 61 ​HOW TO HANDLE DEEP REGRETS​ We’ve all said or done things that we later regret, sometimes profoundly so. But where does regret come from, and how are we supposed to handle this tangle of negative emotions that wants to seize control of our thoughts and side-track our focus on more important matters? Listen Now

Progress on last week's goals:

I made good headway on my to-do list last week: I ✅ wrote a bunch of thank you notes, ✅ planned our itinerary & packed for a week in Missouri, ✅ painted a lap desk my dad made for me years ago (I'm loving how it turned out, but may still add a few more flowers to the sides and center landscape), ✅ published a new Tiimberdoodle review for CompuScholar, and ✅ took a dance lesson (waltz, two-step, and polka) with my husband.

I also ✅ started (but ❌ didn't finish) memorizing 1 John 4:15-21 and ✅ began (but am ❌ nowhere near finished) making my woolen quilt.

Personal goals for this week:

• enjoy the rest of our time in Branson
• finish crochet trim on new dress
• celebrate son's birthday
• attend friend's wedding
• vote in run-off election
• order new bath towels
• cut new potholders out of old towels

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Thanks so much for all your help! I'll be back next week with more links, reviews, and resources. If you have any special requests, please let me know. 😊