Introduction

Most people fail in the starting.

—Maureen Falcone

We’ve got a confession to make right at the start. The two of us are busy. Sometimes hurried and harried. We live in a busy household in the city of Seattle with two little boys and a jam-packed schedule. We feel the press of impending deadlines. We don’t always have the luxury of time to talk like we want. But that’s not our confession—that’s life!

The confession is that we wrote this One Year devotional for ourselves as much as we did for you. It’s not a hard-hitting, roll-up-your-sleeves kind of book with challenging techniques, tips, and tests. We’ve written plenty of those kinds of books, but this is not one of them. This is more contemplative, reflective. Not so much a study in “how-tos” as it is an experience in having time to talk about what matters most as you walk together with God.

Along the way we’ve found something to be true for us that may become true for you as you read these daily meditations together. Sometimes we feel as though we are shoehorning into our lives these four or five minutes of reading and talking and sometimes praying. On occasion, we feel as though we are even forcing it. “There, we’ve had our ‘time together,’” kind of idea. “Now we can check that off our list and get back to the real tasks at hand.” You might feel the same way occasionally as you go through these pages.

That’s okay. Some days you’ll have more time than others. What we have also found is that the daily effort, even if it was very little, seemed to make a big difference. In fact, we’ve come to call these little meditations our “penny moments.” Why? Well, because pennies are a dime a dozen, so to speak. Without much effort, one could find a penny on the floor or in a parking lot. And without much effort you can spend five minutes at some point in your day on a meditation from this book. No big deal.

Or so it seems.

In truth, these penny moments seem to add up when a husband and wife begin to collect them, just like actual pennies do, and even compound. For example, did you know that a one-cent-per-case increase of Coca-Cola would bring the company an additional $45 million a year? Or that if Krispy Kreme increased the cost of each donut by one penny, the company would increase profits by $27 million?

It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. And it may seem hard to believe that the few minutes you’ll spend each day, over the course of using this book for a year, could have a huge payoff, but we are confident that it will.

It says a great deal about you and your marriage that you have decided to start this process. We wish you every success as you join your spirits together in this daily routine.

Les and Leslie Parrott

Seattle, Washington