Ken

For all you aspiring artists and t-shirts designers, a great online resource for creating and selling merchandise is cafepress.com. I first became aware of Cafepress about four or five years ago. You upload your designs and they handle the rest. They stock the merchandise, print the t-shirts, and ship them to your customers. They have a base price and you are allowed to charge anything above that. When your item sells, you keep the difference.LifePoint has a cafepress store ... www.cafepress.com/lifepoint.So does CrossThreads (a little side business) ... www.cafepress.com/crossthreads.Click on the following picture if you want to learn how to set up your own free store.

Have you noticed how over the past 12 months MySpace has crept into the public consciousness? It's on a radio jingle for another company. Every aspiring musician has a "MySpace" page. We've had people visit LifePoint who first found us via MySpace. Well, today I went to pay our rent for September. Our landlord is a local realtor and I usually hand deliver the check. Not that I have to ... I just do. As we were talking, I noticed that the receptionist behind the counter was checking her MySpace page -- at work!Have you got a MySpace page? Want to be a MySpace friend? :-)

Sometimes we get so busy that we fail to slow down and recognize the many good things that God has poured into our life. There will be pessimists quick to point out the rough spots -- but I'll leave that up to them.I'm continually amazed that God saw fit to bless me with a wonderful wife and companion. It's a joy to watch her interact with our daughters and to see them adopting many of her wonderful qualities. She's also a very dedicated teacher who loves her job and the people she works with.Our daughters, Hannah and Hope, are a constant source of laughter and emotions (FYI: I'm sure there will come a time when the emotions will not be so cherished). Hannah just got braces and it's fun just to look at her. Hope's sense of humor is maturing and pretty quick. I'm just happy to be around for…

Since I know all of seven people have been anxiously awaiting the return of our LifePoint podcast ... I'm pleased to say we're back online! I would like to say that the hiatus was due to an extended summer vacation or that the FCC took us offline. Or even that my newest blog fan hacked the podcast. But ... all that matters is that we're back up and running.You can subscribe to our weekly podcast here. Or look for us on iTunes. Seriously.

As the youngest of five boys, I learned certain survival instincts early in life. It didn’t take long to figure out that not only was I eight years younger but I weighed about 100 pounds less than my next oldest brother. From there, the ratios only widened and were not to my advantage.For a while, one of my survival tactics included being able to run places the others couldn’t fit. Places like behind couches and under beds. Unfortunately (for me), I eventually outgrew that one myself.As a result, I have said “uncle” more than one person ought to have to.Not only do we develop survival tactics to survive older brothers, we develop survival tactics to survive in relationships. Not all survival tactics are bad. If you anticipate getting shipwrecked, it’s wise to pack a few supplies.But sometimes our survival tactics actually work against having a healthy relationship. Perhaps you trusted…