Mark Twain once called courage the “mastery of fear.” Jeanette Hardage shared the poem below about courage with her daughters many years before she published it in Faith and Other Matters, clearly hoping to pass that quality on to her children through her words. Her …
Read MoreChoose Joy
One of Jeanette Hardage’s daughters recently came across an unpublished poem in Jeanette’s handwriting tucked away inside a piece of old furniture. She had probably not intended it for publication, as it contained none of her usual word choice edits. With candor she shares how …
Read MoreLooking Ahead
The poems of Jeanette Hardage often express her hope in a heavenly future. The poem below, handwritten by in April 1997 and never before published, instead anticipates possible future joys on earth. At first the reader may get an impression of disappointment with life, until …
Read MoreSoli Deo Gloria
In an undated journal entry, Jeanette Hardage expressed the hope that her Christian identity would show through in all of her writing somehow, even when a book or article was not obviously sacred in nature. In the early 2000s, she began to foster this by …
Read MoreA Reluctant Saint
Jeanette Hardage always wanted to be thought of as a regular gal, definitely not as a “saint.” Perhaps she feared that if others thought of her as living on some higher plane of existence, they would not be receptive to her ideas and would impede …
Read MoreSailing Through Life
Jeanette Hardage found inspiration in the writing of Billy Collins, U.S. Poet Laureate from 2001-2003, to the point that she incorporated some of her favorite phrases from his book Sailing Alone Around the Room into a poem of her own. She called this a “silly” …
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