Spiritwick

I've prayed, been prayed for, been taught about prayer, and been baffled by prayer for as long as I can remember.  As a child, I would lay in my bed praying for salvation over and over again because I was concerned that the prayer for salvation worked like a light switch, and since I couldn't remember the first time I'd prayed for salvation, it was entirely possible that I'd prayed an even number of times and had thus switched it to "off" now.  I would fall asleep praying repetitively for Jesus to come into my heart hoping that I would end on an odd number of prayers somehow.  As I grew older, I came to understand better how ridiculous this childhood theology was, but there was a new thing I didn't understand...why pray when God already knows everything?  It just seemed redundant.  Then, I started learning even more about the redundant principle in prayer.  (Yes, I totally made up that phrase.)  The Bible instructs us to "pray continuously." (1 T...

Ok, team, I've been seeing a lot of Facebook links to a specific blog post on marriage.  You all seem to just love it.  I'm not a big fan of it. Here it is:   http://sethadamsmith.com/2013/11/02/marriage-isnt-for-you/ I do agree with it on a couple of pretty big issues.  First, marriage and love in marriage are not about making me happy.  Second, love seeks the interests of others and is sacrificial.  I'd like to believe that is what most people are applauding in this post.  However, there is a big underlined portion that I completely disagree with.  "You don’t marry to make yourself happy, you marry to make someone else happy ." Not only do I disagree with this statement, I think it's dangerous.  I suppose that danger element is why I can't seem to just overlook this sentence and forget about the post in the cloud of everyone else's praise for it. I absolutely did not marry my husband to make him happy.  I probably did marry s...

There is an unforgivable sin in my books.  It's harming one of my babies.  My mother bear instincts want anyone who even comes close to that to suffer the consequences.  You hurt one of my babies, and you will regret it, so says Mama Bear.  But what happens when one of my babies is the transgressor?  When NOT forgiving is NOT a choice?  This was the sad reality I found myself in this week. My oldest impulsively but intentionally threw a toy at her youngest sister that caused a nasty forehead gash.   Apparently, forehead wounds bleed like you wouldn't think possible because within a minute or 2, my youngest child was covered from head to toe in her own blood.  This is a sight no mother wants to see.  After an ER trip, my youngest was all patched up and back to her playful self, but I remain a bit traumatized, and honestly, I feel a disconnect with my oldest now as a result.  How could she hurt my baby like that!?  I know the answer...

When I first got married, I focused in on my marriage like a laser beam.  I wanted the marriage to be a healthy and lasting one, so I needed to know how to make that happen.  We got a nightly marriage devotional book to work through.  I listened intently to every marriage lesson and voraciously devoured any marriage advice I came across.  From all of this information, I saw lots of areas that needed improvement, so I set out to improve them ASAP.  If we were invited out with anyone, we usually turned them down.  After all, my hubby wasn't sold on the event the second I brought it up, and it was probably best to just stay home and focus on my marriage. When we had our first child, I did the same thing.  The crazy hormones didn't help.  If I didn't understand why she was crying, then I was obviously a failure as a mother, and I'd start to wonder what I'd gotten myself into. If we were invited anywhere, the answer was obviously "no."  It might...

A few months ago, I joined an Open Table.  Open Table is a somewhat difficult program to explain in brief, so here's a snippet from their website:  "A movement of servants restoring people in poverty to our communities through relationship and the investment of our own vocational and life experiences and personal networks." When I was first asked if I was interested in joining, I wasn't sure what exactly I had to offer, but I was interested.  When I'd thought in the past about what a Godly response to poverty would be, this was the sort of approach that seemed right to me, so I was willing to step out and sign up. As I learned more about the lives we'd be stepping alongside of, I wondered what I had to offer on this team.  I considered my vocational experiences, and there were no young children or speech/language disabilities involved.  I considered my life experiences, and they seemed pretty far removed from the experiences of this family.  I consi...

When I've heard the Parable of the Prodigal Son over the years, I've heard it told roughly like this: "A younger son of a rich man wanted all his inheritance up front. The father granted his son's wish, and this younger son then went out and squandered his money in parties and women and as much fun as he could figure out how to have.  Eventually, his money ran out, and he ended up working in a pig pen and longing for a bite of the pigs' feed.  Once he came to his senses, he realized that his father's servants were treated better than he was being treated, so he went back to his father to beg for a position as a servant.  The loving father saw him coming from a distance and ran out to greet him.  He didn't give him a servant's job.  Instead, he welcomed him back as a son and threw a lavish feast in his honor.  The older son, who had stayed working for his father all this time, saw this party and became bitter and jealous. What a d-bag!" Ok, so t...

I'm back at home in Texas now, but my trip is not yet over.  God is still teaching me and working things out in me that became illuminated in this trip. I want to share with you a brief list of some of my big take-aways from this trip (so far). * God is SO big and SO loving. Watching Him knit together the big and small details of this trip was incredible.  Daily, I had moments of recognizing "That was God.  He did that right there."  It made me realize that back at home there are probably a lot more of those moments that I don't recognize.  I see a good "coincidence" or even a "blessing," but I don't stop and say, "That was awesome, God!  Thank you for that!"  James 1:17 says, "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." God wasn't different in Uganda than He is here. Is there a good and perfect gift in my day? That was ...

As I mentioned in my last post, I didn't journal the last 2 days in Uganda, but I do want to share with you an overview and some highlights from those days. On Wednesday, June 26th, our team focused on teaching about children's ministry to the male and female attendees of the conference.  Since one of our senior pastors and our family pastor were on the team, it was a natural fit for them to be the ones to explain the importance of intentionally reaching out to children.  (Considering that the median age in Uganda is 15.5, this is an incredibly important population in Uganda.  Of course, I think it's an incredibly important population anywhere!)  After our lessons on some whys and hows of children's ministry, we all participated in a demonstration of a children's lesson.  It was a lot of fun to see all the pastors and their wives participating as the "children" in the singing and dancing.  In fact, Mama Bishop said that she has never seen the men dance s...

I haven't posted on here in about a week because I've been in the throes of house cleaning. If you had seen the "before" views of my house, you'd understand how I could be in the "throes" of house cleaning.  I estimate about 55-60 man hours of labor were put into getting my house in decent shape over the previous 3 days, and there is still more to do.  I mean, I know there will ALWAYS be more to do, but there is still some catch-up cleaning to do, not just maintenance stuff.  Anyways, all of this is to explain that I was busy each day and exhausted each night, and blogging just wasn't going to happen. I'm taking a bit of a break from cleaning today though, and I thought I'd share my next journal entry during this "break." On Tuesday, June 25th, I presented 2 lessons to women leaders in Jinja on the 2nd day of our conference.  By the end of that day I was pretty exhausted too, so my journal entry for the day is quite short.  In fa...

Instead of posting about the Tuesday when I presented my lessons at the conference, I thought I'd take a pause in the journal entries and share the devotional that I wrote out on the evening of June 22nd and shared at our team's nightly meeting on June 24th.  I hope and pray that it blesses you. (Please pardon the awkward formatting of the block quote.  I don't know the HTML to keep the whole thing a block quote with multiple paragraphs but without the separating lines between paragraphs.) Some of you have read The Hiding Place, I'd imagine.  For those of you who haven't, let me briefly summarize it.  It's a true story about a woman named Corrie ten Boom.  She was an unmarried daughter of a watchmaker in Holland who lived with her father and elder sister into her 50s when WWII came to Holland.  Holland resisted briefly but became a German-occupied nation. In their desire to help the persecuted Jews around them, the ten Booms started a resistance cell i...

At the end of the first full conference day, I was working on looking over the lessons I'd be presenting the next day to make sure that I was familiar enough with them that I wouldn't just be staring at my notes the whole time.  As a result, I didn't manage to write out a whole journal entry that day.  However, I did jot down 5 highlights of the day.  I'll post the highlights as I wrote them then, and I'll expand them a bit. Highlights from June 24th  Connecting with Mary and Teopisto          These were the 2 women that I had the opportunity to talk to the most on that first day.  Mary led our praise sessions each day, and upon our first meeting I told her that she had the same name as my mother and that she sort of reminded me of her.  By the end of the trip, she was officially going by "Mama Mary" and sending greetings from my Ugandan mother to my mother back home!  Teopisto had many questions for me that first day ...

June 23, 2013        10:10pm I am tired but surprisingly I'm less exhausted than I was 4 hours ago.  Today was like 3-4 days all wrapped up in one. I went to Jinja Christian Center this morning, and it was an amazing experience.  Before last night, I hadn't known which church I'd prefer to go to -- the Cathedral or a more charismatic church, but as soon as Brenda asked last night, I had an immediate knowledge that I wanted to go to JCC.  I'm so glad I went. The praise and worship time was spectacular.  The first song was in Lunganda, but there was a repetitive "Hallelujah" that I could join in on , and I enjoyed participating with their praise by clapping with them to God as they sang.  Their next song was "Worthy is the Lamb."  I was so excited to know the song and to be able to sing with them this time.  It took me to such a deep place or worship and praise -- the words of the song itself, singing with those people, and bein...