Timm Leikip

Latest Author Features

A Mother’s Day Prayer

On this fine spring morning, Lord, an extra special prayer; It should be said on every morning for mothers everywhere, A prayer that You’ll keep filling them with blessings from above, The blessings being the blessings three of faith and hope and love. The faith in You she passed along to me through every year, The faith I cling to every day through laughter and through tears. The faith she lives in how she lives in every little way, The faith she passes on to everyone she sees each day. In hope she brought me to this world, in hope we live evermore, The hope we hold which places us

Horses Past and Horses Remembered

Wishing There Were More I have always loved animals. Always. The household in which I grew up was pet friendly, barely. Mom kept parakeets, but not for long. Most escaped through the kitchen window after serving a brief sentence of confinement in a toy-less cage in the pantry off the kitchen. Dad kept tropical fish. That hobby was short-lived when he decorated the tank with rocks he had brought home after a vacation to Yellowstone National Park. I highly recommend the trip. However, placing the mineral-laden, but beautiful, rocks in the tank with your tropical fish is not conducive to fish longevity. The left-over tropical fish food was sold at

Celebrate Love | The History and Traditions of Valentine’s Day

Allow me to be among the many (hopefully for you it’s many) to wish you a Happy Valentine’s Day. For those of you who have great Valentine traditions in place, and look forward positively to celebrating the day with that special someone — CONGRATULATIONS! Given the popularity of the day, you are in the vast majority. For those that haven’t enjoyed the same level of long-term celebration on that day, allow me to shed some light on the challenges we face and the history of how those challenges have evolved. (Note, facts of history are always open to subjective interpretation. Some of those liberties have been exercised by the author.)

Healthy Goals | Resolute This…

Happy New Year! Now that Christmas is packed up for another year — well, at least the decorations — we can focus on another time-honored tradition. New Year’s Resolutions. For most, those resolutions don’t change from year to year. Eat and drink healthier, lose weight, save more money, spend less on dumb stuff, and (here’s the big one,) make more quality time for family and friends. Typically, when the year is over, we discover we ate and drank the same, found whatever weight we may have lost, and spent what we should have saved on impulse stuff to help us improve our diet, lose weight, and help us keep our

A Story of Comfort | A Pawsitive Christmas

Peter’s daily nap took little effort on his part. The longer, cold nights combined with the shorter, slate gray days created a perfect environment for insomnia prevention. The regular sleeps, whether an afternoon siesta or night-long break from reality, gave some measure of relief from the constant heartache brought on by the memories. Since her passing, the holidays were always a difficult time, rendering the frequent, daily sleeps even more welcome and, perhaps, more necessary. The onset of her illness was unidentifiable, but its discovery was certainly no cause for thanksgiving. To say the holiday was stigmatized in Peter’s heart was the most drastic understatement imaginable. What he found most