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    UPDATE — Please pray for my mom — Aneurysm Surgery Tomorrow!

    I would greatly appreciate your prayers for my mom, Kathy, as she was taken to the hospital by ambulance today for unexplained and profuse bleeding, transfused, admitted, and will be having surgery for an aneurysm in her abdomen tomorrow. All this after fighting off a MRSA infection following an arterial bypass surgery last month and dealing with a wound that won’t heal (and requires daily wound care by an in-home nurse). Poor mom! I know it’s going to be a long night in her hospital room tonight. (I keep trying to reach her just to check in one more time, but so far I haven’t been able to.) Your prayers…

  • Relationships & Peacemaking

    Family Conflicts and the Holidays

    If you’ve ever listened to my testimony, you know that I come from a bit of a challenging family background. Thankfully, I have a good relationship with my mom, dad, and sister now. But every once in awhile, waves of emotions related to my past will splash over me (and often feel like they’re drowning me). This is especially true around the holidays. I don’t know why the holidays can be so tempting to feelings of sadness, loneliness, and dissatisfaction with family relationships. Maybe it’s the canned, fake sentimentality of a “Folgers Christmas Commercial” perfect family. Maybe it’s genuine grief over the effects of sin on this fractured life in…

  • Singleness & Marriage

    Presuming the Worst

    Fred and I recently had a helpful and relatively profound epiphany—at least it’s been profound for our friendship and marriage. We realized that at the heart of many of our recent quarrels and fights, we were presuming that the other person was upset, unhappy, or frustrated. With us. And usually? We were presuming that the other person was extremely upset, unhappy, or frustrated. So then we either backtracked into some sort of “make it all better” over-reactive mode OR we became quickly (and disproportionately) defensive or even attack-y, so before you could say the word IRONIC, the other person WAS upset, unhappy, or frustrated. Needless to say, this was not…

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    Not Accept Prison as a Normal Part of Life

    Walking through the tailgate area outside of Candlestick Park last Thursday for the 49ers-Bears NFL game was quite a cultural experience for me. For the most part, I really tried to just be in the moment, relax, and experience something new and interesting. But every few feet, I would instinctively cringe in response to the extremely coarse / vile / crude language and sounds being blasted from various speakers. Of course, I have known intellectually for years that “out there” is an entire culture of music filled with blasphemous M*F* language and s*xual sounds. But reading about something in an article and having it forced into my ears and mind…

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    Marks of Maturity

    HT: Pastor Anyabwile at PureChurch for linking to this great post by Al Mohler on The Marks of Manhood. He makes thirteen points that are all worth reading and reflecting on: 1. Spiritual maturity sufficient to lead a wife and children 2. Personal maturity sufficient to be a responsible husband and father 3. Economic maturity sufficient to hold an adult job and handle money 4. Physical maturity sufficient to work and protect a family 5. Sexual maturity sufficient to marry and fulfill God’s purposes 6. Moral maturity sufficient to lead as example of righteousness 7. Ethical maturity sufficient to make responsible decisions 8. Worldview maturity sufficient to understand what is…

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    Worship is …

    “Worship is the submission of all of our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by his holiness; the nourishment of mind with his truth; the purifying of imagination by his beauty;  the opening of the heart to his love; the surrender of will to his purpose-—-all this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable.” William Temple (HT: RZIM Slice 2070)  

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    Fred IS My (Guitar) Hero

    We had a wonderful Sabbath yesterday with Fred’s brother John (3rd of the 5 Barthel boys) and his family … Happiness really IS Aunt Penny’s kitchen: And her garden … But those cousins are pretty wonderful too!   Even if one of them HAS led deacon Barthel away from a quiet life of engineering / programming / peacemaking to the hard-rockin’-world of GUITAR HERO PLAYIN’: I’m thanking God for our dear family— Yours, Tara B.  

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    Cable Cars and Fisherman’s Wharf

    The California fun continues for the ol’ Barthel fam! A really nice conducter found a way for all of us to squeeze onto his car (which was cramped and crowded and a little scary on the hills, but super fun!): Couldn’t go past the salt water taffy store without buying a few BUCKETS of taffy. Oh, and the grossest jelly beans EVER—made to match jelly bellies, I guess you ask, “Is it cafe mocha or EAR WAX?!” “IT’S NOT CAFE MOCHA!!” Yeek! Total boy thing: The weather was beautiful and the company was perfect. (Oh! And happy birthday sistah Kali!)   Now we’re looking very forward to meeting Uncle John,…