• Thoughts

    When God Doesn’t Burn it All Down

    Remember how God sent Jonah to call the people of Nineveh out of their evil ways and back to Him? Jonah was so offended by the people of Nineveh that he didn’t want to offer them God’s message of reconciliation, and he actually first ran the opposite direction. He ran so hard that he endangered the lives of sailors and ended up as fish bait before he relented to God’s big ask. When the people of Nineveh did listen and repent, Jonah was livid that God forgave them. He was so ready for God to burn it all down, that he missed that God’s heart was to be reconciled to…

  • Thoughts

    The Gas Station Jerk

    This morning I’d like to explore getting my feelings hurt over silly things. The first little story is about my cat, and it may seem unrelated to the story of the gas-station-jerk, but my emotional fall out from each is tethered to the same starting point. Nala is our fifteen year old cat that we adopted from the SPCA about a week or two after we returned from our honeymoon. After doing a few puzzles in our tiny one bedroom apartment in the evenings, we were both a little bored. As I was in graduate school and tended to work in the field and out of home rather than in…

  • Garden,  Thoughts

    A Pruning of Personality

    My house is gross, and it’s really only my fault. I chose to adopt two cats. I chose to buy my son two parakeets. I chose to have two kids. The vision of the piles of clutter often feels like a hot, thick vapor in my lungs, and it’s the reason I’m driven out into the yard where I can feel the breeze and watch things grow. However, at the end of the summer season, the veggie garden and perennial beds start to resemble the “cat room” of my house and provides little solace from the tasks I’m avoiding inside. The weeds and the rotten tomato vines pile up and…

  • Thoughts

    Cynicism

    I’ve felt a shift in my soul recently, and I’d be remiss to not recognize a similar shift in my closest friends’ hearts as well. I feel tenderness where there were once walls. I sense vulnerability and a willingness to be cared for where there was once a posture of self-sufficiency. It is possible that this is simply the outcome of the passage of time or age. However, I don’t believe that is the case as some people will bare spiritual arms to the grave. Maturity doesn’t just befall people as do the lines on their face or the gray hairs on their head. Maturity is more so the unwinding…

  • Thoughts

    Must Listen

    My friend sent me this talk several weeks back, and she was sent it several years ago. So yes it’s a bit old as far as things on the Internet go, but I think the message to mothers is so excellent. It’s just an 18 minute listen.   I don’t know how many of us deaden the passion in our souls, but I know there are quite a few people who have forgotten who they are. They’ve checked out for their own reasons, and maybe they thought they hit the pause button but hit delete instead. I have thoughts — so many thoughts on this topic — but I’m just…