As many of us prepare to end our summer by jumping back on the computer (for work or school or date nights), there are some ways we can be proactive in battling the endless cycle of cyber meetings:

We now live in a society where seeking mental help is normalizing and accepting. However, mental health in the Black community is neglected a lot. It is looked down upon to go to counseling or talk to a therapist.

I’ve been learning the fine art of balance in my life recently. Not necessarily intentionally, but life has a way of handing you what you need right when you need it sometimes.

With her characteristic nuance and care, Lore Ferguson Wilbert dives into this topic fraught with so much controversy and concern in her new book, Handle With Care: How Jesus Redeems the Power of Touch in Life and Ministry. Exploring what touch looks like in the context of different relationships, Lore encourages us to reframe how we think about touch and see it for what it can be — a beautiful, powerful gift and ministry tool to ourselves and others.

For pretty much the entirety of January 2020, I really didn’t feel like myself. I was crying every few days. I was having a hard time sleeping. Everything in my life felt boring, mundane, and generally unsatisfying.

Basically, I was stuck.

Here are three guardrails to help you show up on social media in the healthiest way possible.

One undergraduate chooses to practice gratitude when the global pandemic brings her college career to an abrupt end.

Kindness prays for the victims and the shooter, my grandma, and the caller. And kindness radiates from the faces of those praying and working towards justice and beauty—in the face of Mister Rogers on reruns and in the face of my grandma, even when she can’t remember my full name.

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It may be finding joy in life’s minuscule, mundane moments. It may be up and moving your life halfway across the world. It may be parenting as best you can, through temper tantrums and toddlers taking their first steps. But don’t fall for the lure of Everyone Else’s Extraordinary.

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Without further ado, here are my 3 sustainable steps – the same ones I tell those who ask me how I create long-haul habits – to cultivate discipline.

I've realized as I've gotten older that the more we choose things and people and situations that are who we are, the stronger we become. The more we build upon the pieces of ourselves and the more we discover our intricacies, the more we discover who we are and who others are.

It’s not about goal setting. It’s not about a resolute attitude. It’s the habit of getting down on my knees and scraping the manna for today up from the ground. It’s the faithfulness of bending down because I believe there’s something there to pick up.

Growing up, I always dreamed about falling in love. I hoped that at some point I would meet someone that looked like Nick Jonas and was very nice, and we would fall in love and never fight and get married and read books all day. Whenever I saw a boy that was around my age and reasonably attractive I was pretty sure that he was “the one.” I felt like falling in love was a super-important thing, and I wanted it to happen as soon as possible.

I can’t fix social media. I can’t fix the comment rage.

All I feel I can do is sit and stare at my phone, paralyzed by the incessant reality of a world too big for me.

The soundtrack of my teen years came from the music of Phil Collins. I’m sure my dad listened to other artists at the time, but for some reason, his music stood out to me. It had an easiness about it, a softness, which starkly contrasted to my reality.