Spiritwick

This morning, as I was reflecting and praying over the Bible passages I'd read today, I realized in a new way how the character of God as our Father is interwoven through the whole Biblical narrative. I'm not sure if I'll say this well, or if Biblical scholars would agree with me, but I want to try to write out my thoughts on this today. I'm slowly working through Leviticus in my Bible readings right now, and I couldn't help but think today about how detailed many of these directives from God were. It was early enough in Israel's history as a nation that I'm not convinced all of these issues had really been ISSUES yet even, and I began thinking about how and why I give directives like these to my young children. I still have a pretty young family, as my oldest is only 8 now, and I realized that some rules I give to my children are most definitely to keep them safe or to maintain order or even just to protect our provisions for them. However, some of my dir...

I'm not really afraid to say or type "hell," but it's a lot more fun to use H-E-double-hockey-sticks, and I'm a fan of embracing the simple pleasures in life right now! I especially need to embrace the simple pleasures right now because this last year has been ROUGH. As a quick re-cap of the highlights (or really the lowlights probably), over the last year, I have been involved in 4 life-or-death situations with my immediate family and closest friends. All four of them required hospital visits and/or stays, and 2 of them required police assistance. I have been in the thick of dealing with lice infestations and parasite infestations. We heartbreakingly left our church of over four years, which was an agonizing decision involving many months and tears and attempts to reconcile. Also, my own health took a dramatic swan-dive, which was probably understandable considering the events of the year. This by no means captures all of the year's dramas, but they were prob...

For over a month now, I've been dealing with pain. Last week, it peaked into a labor intensity level of pain. My husband had to take days off of work to help. My children were asking if I was about to die and checking in on me occasionally because they were worried I'd already died. Medication has brought the pain down to tolerable levels for the most part by now, and more tests are being run to try to determine the cause of the pain. However, it's become clear to me that it is entirely possible the answers will be neither quick nor easy and that pain may be the new "normal" for me. To say this transition is stressful would be an understatement. I spent last Thursday pretty much crying or sleeping all day long. I can feel the stress and concern rolling off my loved ones in their looks and moods and even their nightmares. I can't imagine what they must be reading off of me right now. Part of me has wished for answers or for this to settle into normality faste...

I was talking to a friend the other day who was about to start homeschooling her children. In the course of this conversation, she said, "I know I'm not supposed to call it a 'blessing,' but I don't know how else to say it. I feel blessed that we have a 3rd paycheck this month just in time to help buy things we'll need to start homeschooling." Now, I'm not positive that  this blog post  is what my friend was referring to when she said she knew she wasn't supposed to call a paycheck a blessing, but it's what I immediately recalled. It's a popular blog post that I've seen on my Facebook feed several times. I've seen it posted by compassionate, thoughtful Christian friends, so I've read it several times now as it has come up in my feed. I may have even "liked" it at some point as I felt it pushed against the prosperity gospel, which I believe is an incredibly destructive teaching. However, it has sat less and less well ...