I once thought myself quite adept at walking. Two feet, alternating steps, arms swinging for balance. It seemed the perfect exercise, a system I had mastered. Then age crept in, my chronic illness worsened, and I quickly learned that walking is far more complicated than my toddler self ever imagined. Wah!

For instance, not long ago, I was strolling along, admiring the trees like a nature documentary narrator. Sadly, I failed to notice the road ahead was no longer flat. My ankle twisted one way, my body the other. Down I went, while my dog looked on with what I can only describe as mild disappointment and perhaps a hint of amusement in her eyes.

Another time, I got so distracted watching our dog, Tess, chase a squirrel that I walked straight into a low-hanging branch, nearly knocking myself senseless.

And sometimes, there's simply no excuse.

A memory hit me out of nowhere the other day, so vivid I could practically smell it. Fifteen, maybe twenty years ago, Jason and I were riding in his Bronco, headed out to cut firewood. Not exactly a glamorous errand, I know. But the weather was perfectly crisp, the conversation easy and light, and we stopped at a convenience store to grab energy drinks and candy bars like we were fueling up for a grand adventure instead of, well, chainsaws and sweat.

We laughed the whole way there. I remember feeling completely carefree, like nothing in the world could touch us. It was the image of a young, happy couple with nothing weighing them down.

That memory played on repeat in my mind for days, sweet and golden and warm.

Until it wasn't.

Suddenly, it started to feel less like a treasured keepsake and more like a prosecutor's exhibit.

I did an experiment last week. I opened Facebook, set a timer, and told myself I'd only scroll for five minutes. Five minutes, folks. That's it. Forty-five minutes later, I looked up with a crick in my neck, a weird sense of dread, and no memory of what I'd even seen. I just knew I felt worse than when I started.

Anybody else? Because I don't think I'm the only one.

We joke about our phones being "addictive," and we laugh about wasting hours mindlessly scrolling as if it's a harmless quirk, the way some folks bite their nails or twirl their hair. But the more I've paid attention to how I feel after I close the apps, the more I've realized it's not so harmless after all. Social media has a sneaky way of stirring up anxiety and even depression, and it does so in several ways.

I've been reading The Prince Warriors series by Priscilla Shirer and Gina Detwiler lately (more on that in a future devotion, because trust me, there's a lot to say). I just started book three, and I came upon a scene that made me laugh so hard I had to put the book down.

Two of the Prince Warriors, Evan and Manuel, were rowing across a pond in a rickety old rowboat. Naturally, because it's an old rowboat in an adventure story, it started taking on water. Evan kept rowing like his life depended on it and hollered at Manuel to grab the bucket and start bailing. Manuel lunged for the bucket floating at the bottom of the boat, only to discover that it had a big crack running right down the side. He let out a huge sigh of frustration, and I almost lost it.

I didn't laugh because it was side-splittingly funny. I laughed because I felt it.

My husband, Jason, loves to bake. Give him some flour (or wheat berries to grind his own), yeast, and a stand mixer, and he's happy as a clam. This week, he decided homemade rolls were on the dinner menu, and everything was going smoothly...until the dough started climbing up the side of the mixing bowl like it was trying to make a great escape.

Now, Jason knows the drill. When dough sticks to the bowl, you grab a rubber spatula and scrape it back into place. Simple. Easy. Effective. But Jason, in a stroke of "genius," decided he didn't want to dirty another dish. (Bless his heart!) He'd already used his handheld dough whisk, so surely that could double as a spatula, right?

Wrong! So very wrong!

What followed was a mechanical collision of epic proportions.

If you've been watching the news, you've probably heard that Wales has had its driest, hottest summer since records began. July was the driest in nearly 200 years, and by mid-August, some parts of the country had received a meager six percent of the expected rainfall. Six percent! My garden looks less like a garden and more like a crunchy doormat. Even Henrhyd Falls (known as Batman Falls from The Dark Knight Rises) has run completely dry for the first time in recorded history. When Batman's waterfall stops falling, you know things are serious.

Naturally, all this heat and drought have turned Wales into kindling. Firefighters across England and Wales have battled nearly a thousand wildfires already this year, with fires occurring frequently through the first weeks of August alone. The large, dramatic blazes have mostly hit the south, but even here in mid-Wales, smaller fires have popped up along our hillsides.

Have you ever put something off, telling yourself you'd "get to it later," only to discover that later, the job had grown three sizes bigger and twice as stubborn? Oh, friend, do I have a story for you, and it comes straight from the pages of the Old Testament, tucked into the often-overlooked books of Ezra, Haggai, and Zechariah.

When the Israelites finally returned home from their seventy years of Babylonian exile, they had one big, holy assignment waiting for them: rebuild the temple. And bless their hearts, they actually started strong! They gathered together "as one man" in Jerusalem, set up the altar, and laid the foundation of the Lord's house with singing and shouts of joy so loud that some couldn't tell the weeping from the celebrating (Ezra 3:1, 10-13). It was a beautiful, hopeful beginning.

But then opposition showed up, the way it always seems to.

I need to confess something right up front: I love people... in small, carefully rationed doses. Put me in a quiet room with my dog, a book, and a cup of tea, and I am the sweetest, most pleasant version of myself you will ever meet. But stick me in a crowded family reunion for six hours straight, and something happens. My smile tightens. My patience evaporates. By the time I finally climb into the car to go home, I am basically Mr. Hyde in a denim skirt.

For years, I thought something was wrong with me. Good Christians are supposed to love being around people all the time, right? Shouldn't fellowship fill me up instead of wearing me down? I quietly filed myself under the label of "flawed" or “broken” and moved on, feeling guilty every time I turned down an invitation just so I could recharge alone.

Then I learned about grasshoppers, or more specifically, locusts. Stay with me here! This gets good.

I can quote James 1:5 in my sleep: "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God..." I've said it over prayer requests, tucked it into cards, and repeated it so many times I could probably say it backward. But for years, I stopped right there. I let the verse trail off into that little ellipsis before it ever got to the best part.

It turns out that "ask of God" is only half the sentence.

James 1:5 actually reads, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him."

Those two phrases, "liberally" and "upbraideth not," are so powerful, yet I had skipped right past both of them like a kid skipping vegetables to get straight to dessert.

Little did I realize they were the dessert!

For the past few months, my personal devotion time has taken an unconventional turn. Instead of working through a specific book of the Bible or following a structured study guide, I've been exploring selected fairy tales, fables, and classic stories, searching for spiritual truths buried within them. As a lifelong lover of stories who has spent more hours than she'd care to admit curled up with a good book and a cup of tea, I thought this might be a fascinating exercise.

I have not been disappointed.

I know it sounds like I've traded my Bible for a bedtime story collection. But stick with me, because this study has led me to powerful truths and spiritual lessons I never expected.

Today, my lesson revolved around a character most of us met in childhood: Peter Pan. You remember him, right? The boy in green tights who refused to grow up.