Welcome to Daily Encouragement!
Hi, I’m Charlene Notgrass. I was born a long time before you, way back in 1953. I loved homeschooling — once I learned how to make homeschooling who our family was instead of something I carried around like a big, heavy burden every day. From the lessons God has taught me, I offer you daily encouragement.
It’s So Nice When People Are Nice
One of the many reasons that we like the downtown Vanderbilt clinic is that it has totally free valet parking. We drive up to the door, leave our keys in the car, tell our last name to one of the…
The Brightest Spot in the Room
One day last week Ray and I drove through Robertson County, Tennessee, where my mother grew up and where I was born. Our route home from his encouraging doctor appointment (praise God!) took us north on Highway 49. Even with…
“I did not!” — “You did too!”
I recently listened to a book about Abraham Lincoln’s 13-day journey from his home in Springfield, Illinois, to Washington, D.C., to be inaugurated as America’s 16th president. The country was in shambles. States were already seceding and forming the Confederate…
Learning or Making Sorghum Syrup–It’s a Process
On Tuesday Ray and I joined a group of about 50 members of homeschooling families for a tour of the Muddy Pond Sorghum Mill in rural Overton County, Tennessee. The Muddy Pond community is home to several Mennonite communities and…
It’s Fall. What Will Our Children Wear?
When a change of season came when our children were young, I remember how I dreaded getting out the next season’s clothes and putting away the clothes from the previous season. When I think of refugee mothers with nothing to…
A Day I Would Count as School
At the Gainesboro Poke Sallet Festival in May, our daughter Mary Evelyn and her family won a day-long pontoon rental at Wildwood Marina in Granville. Ray and I were thrilled when they invited us and Mary Evelyn’s father-in-law to join…