The Heart’s Response to Life
I have recently been overwhelmed.
My circumstances have changed in ways small to the outside world, but large in my perception. Some changes are positive, and some are more challenging, yet something strange has been happening to me in the last two weeks. Each stress, challenge, discouragement and change in my life has been met with a reaction unanticipated, unexpected and unnatural. Read the rest of this entry »
A Touch of Death
When I was 15 years old, 3 students I went to high school with died within 4 days of each other. I attended funerals and memorials and grieved with my classmates. It wasn’t that they were close friends. I knew them through loose associations at school, but I cried because that week myself along with 1,600 other students were forced to acknowledge that death didn’t just come knocking for the old. Read the rest of this entry »
How Did I Get Here?
Volition
“It is good that everyone may eat and drink and find satisfaction in all his toil – this is the gift of God.” – Solomon, King of Israel, a VERY long time ago
I am a person prone to bouts of fitfulness. I love change, adapting to a new situation, working through a challenge. I always feel a bit restless and so, after reading this I immediately thought, “This is what I want.” As soon as that thought was concluded, I heard the Lord say, “You can have it.”
In much of what will happen in our lives, we are utterly powerless. There’s nothing you can do to affect change. Situations, people and more will fluctuate in and out of your life and you really have no control over it. But there is one extremely powerful word in this quote that I think sheds light on this passage: volition. Volition is defined as “the act of willing, choosing or resolving.” As I was growing up, my father would often say to me, “Everything is a volition, Amanda.” He was right. Read the rest of this entry »
Finding Your Purpose: Staying Home
It comes in different forms of expression, with varied nuances and authoritative tones. Yet despite all the different ways I have heard it – from women at every church I have ever attended, to pastors and preachers, from various books speaking of the Christian life, to the patient I took care of in the hospital five years ago – it has been presented to me time and time again: a woman’s place is in the home.
With each hearing of this timeless expression, a piece of me has been irritated to my very core. Looking shamefaced at my irritation and concluding that it was nothing more than a secret dose of feminism that my subconscious keeps locked away in my heart, I sigh and try to push it out of my mind. My place is in the home taking care of my family, taking care of my family, taking care of my – what?!?! Again my heart is exasperated as I remember (as though it is possible I could forget!) the fact that I am 29 and not married, not engaged and not dating.
After church one afternoon, I began cooking a random recipe. I enjoy such things, yet as I cooked I unintentionally relived a conversation I had recently witnessed.
“So,” she began confidentially, “It’s like none of the things I was passionate for have any meaning to me anymore. I just want to stay home with my little boy and take care of my husband.”
As she spoke I smiled, as this was a beautiful passion to have. It is sometimes hard to accomplish in our current economy, but it’s possible and something wonderful to aspire to as a new mother.
A louder, obnoxious voice cut in, interrupting my inner monologue. Read the rest of this entry »
You ARE So Beautiful
I am a task-oriented person. Give me something do. If I have nothing on my agenda, I feel useless. If I have free time, you may be assured that I have also gained a deep sense of guilt. Time has always been a precious commodity and I am acutely aware of that fact.
Never have I felt more pressure to be productive with my time than now. Recently graduated from college, all the realities I observed with detachment from the towers of academia are now mine to own. The world seems larger and more daunting than before. With every job advertisement, my prospects seem to grow increasingly dismal. I have begun to devote an ever-increasing amount of time to that all-important question: what do I want to do with my years? Read the rest of this entry »
Missing Out
At first glance, my dog Faith appears to be the most A.D.D. dog that ever was. She runs from person to person, staying only a few moments before something else catches her attention and she rushes to the next room to get the scoop on what people are doing there.
I can never keep her attention for more that a few moments before she starts to look restless, with her eyes straying to another room, where invariably, there is some type of activity occurring.
Recently, I saw her napping with my father one Saturday afternoon. Well, rather he was napping; she was lying next to him with a tortured expression on her face. There was activity in other parts of the house and she could hear it – she simply could not slip out of her current situation to investigate it.
Before I lose you on the perennial habits of my compulsive dog, I’ll get to the point. One day while watching her bounce from person to person, I realized that she is terrified of missing out on something. You may be thinking that this revelation is not revolutionary at all; you deduced it from the first paragraph. This may be true, but I plan to take this conclusion regarding my crazy dog further and contend that in some respects, she perfectly represents the human condition. Read the rest of this entry »
The Sasquatch Soul: wandering, searching deeply, and avoiding photos. 
The Lesser Known Wrath
September 12, 2012 at 7:34 pm (Devotional, Religious Commentary) (God, passive, sin, wickedness, wrath, wrath of god)
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.” – Romans 1:18
(PREFACE: People don’t often speak of the wrath of God, but it is in the Bible and ought to be spoken of. However, in this writing I am simply highlighting that in every occurrence in your life – even wrath – God is drawing you to Himself.)
This wrath that is revealed by God in this passage, if I understand it correctly, is quite interesting and not at all what our perceived understanding of “wrath” tells us it should be. Knowing Romans chapter 1, God’s wrath isn’t always a fire, earthquake, physical devastation, opening-the-ground-up-and-swallowing-the-sinful kind of wrath – it can be something much worse. Read the rest of this entry »
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