Spiritwick

I had a whole hour to myself today, and I was shocked in that time to discover that I have had a fairly driving principle throughout my life.  Before I get to that though, let me back up.  In elementary school, I had a recurring nightmare.  It somehow epitomized my worst fear at the time even though it was clear to me even then that others would invalidate how traumatic it was for me if I told them.  The dream took place in the hallway of the Christian school that I attended, a place where I spent many hours in reality as my parents were both teachers and principals in the school.  In this dream, my mom would be standing in the hallway with a group of other teachers having a conversation.  Meanwhile, I would be running in terror for the hallway had filled with every evil character I knew from any story or movie. At both ends of this hallway were doors that exited to the outside, thus it was possible to run in a loop through this hallway, outside, and back t...

When I was a young child, my sister's favorite movie was "White Nights" starring the famous ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov.  At least once a year, she'd pull that VHS cassette out of the cabinet to re-watch the movie. For those of you who never had a Baryshnikov-infatuated older sister with whom to watch the movie repeatedly, the basic plot of this 1980s movie is that a Soviet ballet dancer (played by Baryshnikov) who has defected gets stuck back in the Soviet Union after his flight has to make an emergency landing in Siberia.  The Soviets want him to dance for their country again. (This is obviously because he's a freaking brilliant dancer...seriously, if you've never seen the man dance, go youtube him. If he'd lived in Ancient Greece, I'm pretty sure someone would have declared him to be some dancing demigod. Anyways...) The ballet-dancing, former defector wants to escape again.  It's a tense movie with some brilliant dancing thrown in.  Back ...

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...