By now, the sights and sounds of Christmas have already dominated the malls, stores, TV commercials, and even some radio stations. But we just got through Thanksgiving, and Advent doesn’t begin until next Sunday. Liturgically, Christmas begins on December 25 and runs through Epiphany, which is celebrated on January 6. In our churches, decorating follows the liturgical calendar through Advent and the Christmas season. For individual Catholics and families, there are no specific guidelines. So, what do you do with regard to decorating your home or yard for Christmas? Do you wait until Christmas Eve to put up your tree? When do you take the tree and decorations down? Have you sometimes felt like oddballs, being the only ones on your block without decorations until right before Christmas? Are we selling out to the secular spirit of the “holidays” by joining in the decorating craze well before Christmas Day? Let’s see what people think and how your approach this issue.

There was a time when men and women entered into marriage at a relatively young age. In their late teens. In their twenties. Perhaps as late as their thirties. This was not across the board, and some married later in life. In recent decades, we’ve experienced a shift, and now being married by the time you’re in your thirties is considered “young,” while many people find themselves still wondering if God has a husband or wife for them well into their forties and fifties. Does the latter group include you? Have you become discouraged, or asked if you missed your vocational calling, or even given up altogether, believing that you’re going to spend the rest of your life “alone?” If so, let’s have a fruitful conversation about this. Call us at, 1-833-288-3986.

Just about everyone has decisions to make about where they will spend Thanksgiving and Christmas. Husbands and wives each have their own families, and want to try to make sure they spend at least some time with them. It helps in making the decision when one’s family lives closer than the other’s. There are also extended relations and friends who may invite us to be with them at some point over the holidays. How do you make these decisions as a family? As a single person? Do you feel like you’ve “been there, done that,” and now stay close to home with your immediate family more often than not? Let’s talk about this so we can all learn tips on how to honor everyone we can at Thanksgiving and Christmas, while not neglecting ourselves or our own families.

Revelation 3:16 quotes the Spirit saying to the Church in Laodicea, “So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spew you out of my mouth.” It adds that God would even prefer that a person were cold toward Him than to be lukewarm. What does being lukewarm mean to you? How do you understand that word and that passage? How can we know if we’re lukewarm or not? Given how easy it is for us to deceive ourselves, should we regularly check in with others about the condition of our spiritual lives, perhaps a spiritual director Have you ever sensed that you were lukewarm in your attitude toward God? What did you do to correct that? Do you believe you should warn people you know and love if you sense that they are not taking their relationship with God seriously enough? Call us and share your ‘take’ on this important topic. 1-833-288-3986.

We have choices to make every day. Some turn out well, while others don’t quite meet with the same success. In fact, using hindsight, some decisions we make, or actions we take, turn out to have been just plain dumb. Are we more likely to do these types of things when we’re younger and less wise? Or, is the potential there for this to befall us at any stage of our lives? Some examples might be taking on a college friend’s challenge to down ten cans of beer in five minutes, blindly trusting that a wall outlet is working properly when your wife told you she saw sparks coming from it when she last tried to use it, driving at 90 miles an hour with your lights off on a windy country road, you get the idea. Perhaps you would never in a million years have even considered doing anything as outrageous as these things. But, if we’re honest, each of us has done something “dumb” at some point along life’s journey. Let’s talk about this, not simply for the sake of the colorful details, but with a view to how we have matured in our thoughts and actions as we’ve gone through life.

Many of us were taught to say certain prayers as children. For others, it may have come a little later in life when you came to faith in God. In either case, it’s hard to forget the very first prayer you learned to pray. Maybe it was the prayer Jesus told His apostles to pray when they asked him to teach them – the Lord’s Prayer. For you, it may have been the traditional, “Now I lay me down to sleep…” prayer. On Friday, let’s head into the weekend with reminiscing about the first prayer(s) we can recall praying.

RESOURCE :: Advance Medical Directive for Arizona

It’s a situation we never hope to find ourselves in, and can never be fully prepared to face. A loved one is in an accident or becomes terminally ill, and you are the one God places in the position of having to choose whether or not to end life-support measures. This can fill a person (or a family) with incredibly conflicted thoughts and emotions. You want the best for your loved one. And you don’t want them to experience undue suffering. But, “pull the plug?” You know that your “yes” to that question means that your loved will pass away and come face-to-face with Jesus and their judgment. If you’ve had to make this gut-wrenching decision, call Thursday for part two of this impactful discussion and share your experience.

It’s a situation we never hope to find ourselves in, and can never be fully prepared to face. A loved one is in an accident or becomes terminally ill, and you are the one God places in the position of having to choose whether or not to end life-support measures. This can fill a person (or a family) with incredibly conflicted thoughts and emotions. You want the best for your loved one. And you don’t want them to experience undue suffering. But, “pull the plug?” You know that your “yes” to that question means that your loved will pass away and come face-to-face with Jesus and their judgment. If you’ve had to make this gut-wrenching decision, call Wednesday and share your experience.

Here is a helpful guide to end-of-life decisions published by the National Catholic Bioethics Center.

We are going to continue the discussion on the benefits of counseling.  If you did not get a chance to share your story, please do so on this part two broadcast.  We would also like to hear from folks that did not gain anything at all from counseling.  Please share with us why you think this occurred. We do not want you to share what happened in the therapy sessions, just the outcome of the experience. Please call us at, 1-833-288-3986.

For a very long time, and even to a certain extent today, to be in counseling or therapy was viewed by many people as a sign of weakness, or that a person had major problems adjusting to life. This is surely the case in some instances. But seeking out the help of a mental health professional has lost much of that stigma, and more and more people are benefiting and living better lives because of it. If you are, or have been, in some form of counseling or therapy, how has it improved your life? Many people are hesitant to take this step, so what you share could catapult one or more people into a life far greater than they ever imagined possible. Share your take on this topic on Monday’s show.