• Redeeming Church Conflicts

    How to Be a Difference Maker In Your Church

    I have a friend who is, well, just a solid gold gift of wonderfulness. She is! Even Fred said to me last night, “People have no idea what a gift our church has in (well, let’s call her) Mary.” (“Mary” would be quite embarrassed if she read her own name in this blog.) Mary is one of those wise, gentle, funny, insightful, smart, godly, Christ-centered, careful-thinkers and careful-speakers that MAN! We really need in our churches. Mary is also very quiet, single, works an incredibly important and intense job, and doesn’t get too involved in “stuff” at the church. (Even though she is devoted to the church and serves and…

  • Child Protection / Abuse in the Church,  Momma Tara~Parenting

    99.9999999999% Sure Our Friends Won’t Sexually Abuse You

    [From the archives …] I had to go back to Sophia this week to apologize and clarify something … In our “Safe Side Super Chick” and “Right Touch” discussions, we have often talked about why, as a general family rule, we don’t “do” sleepovers. It is a high-risk situation for children and if we don’t know, really know, and trust, really trust, the family, then we just don’t do it. It doesn’t matter that they are members of our church with whom we have only ever had positive interactions. It doesn’t matter if we think they’re wonderful, kind, fabulous people who by all appearances seem to be the sort of people who…

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  • Fear Not!,  Hope in Suffering,  Surviving a Childhood of Neglect and Abuse

    The Most Scared I Have Ever Been in my Entire Life

    On the drive home from church today, my ten year-old daughter asked me when I was the most scared in my entire life. I thought for a moment and then I replied that the saddest I had ever been was when our second child died on that fateful Easter afternoon in 2007 and then when my best friend, my mother, passed away in 2012. But the most scared? Hmmmm. For that I had to dig back to two childhood memories. The first was when the MCHS (Morris Community High School) principal sent a runner to pull me out of my junior-level physics class because my sister was calling from the University of Chicago, frantic, because…

  • Eulogy for a Bad Mother,  Hope in Suffering,  How to Love a Mentally Ill Addict

    The Post-It Notes I Scribbled the Day Before My Mother Died

    [From the archives. A few weeks after my mother died in December of 2012.] I finally dragged myself out of bed yesterday to tackle some of the dust bunnies (really Golden Retriever bunnies) that have accumulated in our bedroom and when I was swiffering out under our bed, the following note scritched its way off of our hardwood floor: “More out of it. Wheezing. Declined a LOT today. On morphine and ativan for comfort. Flailing arms–a sign of breathing problems. Death is imminent. Deep, deep decline. Inserted a foley catheter because she can’t get out of bed any more. Can you come right away?” Yes. It was the scrap of…

  • Redemptive Relationships

    All the Graces of Christianity Connected

    I first heard the terms “charitable presumption” and “charitable judgment” from Ken Sande, founder of RelationalWisdom360. But I first experienced repeated charitable presumptions and judgments in my relationship with my husband, Fred. Fred is a man who embodies 1 Corinthians 13:4-7: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. In his excellent (must read!) article, Charitable Judgments: An Antidote to Judging Others, Ken Sande teaches…

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  • Hope in Suffering,  Sin & Repentance,  Trauma Recovery

    Vandalizing Shalom

    From one of my favorite books … C. Plantinga’s, Not The Way It’s Supposed to Be–A Breviary of Sin: “None of our lives is an accident. We have been called into existence, expected, awaited, equipped, and assigned. We have been called to undertake the stewardship of a good creation, to create sturdy and buoyant families that pulse with the glad give-and-take of the generations. By the sins of attack, we vandalize shalom. By the sins of flight we abandon it. We ‘hate the light and do not come to the light’ (John 3:20). [BUT!] Don’t forget the resolve of God. God wants shalom and will pay any price to get it…

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  • Hope in Suffering

    The Struggle with Perspective

    “When hope fades, cynicism is often waiting in the wings. And this is indeed one of the great challenges of our time. Skepticism (there is nothing good and I know it) and cynicism (I can’t trust anybody or anything and I know this) seem reasonable choices. But is this a necessary outcome or orientation for us? I think not … The Scriptures open up for us a view of the world that is very different. There is a God. This God is the creator, and He is personal, loving, willful, and particular. We see that despite being a good creation, a disruption and disorder has occurred and the drama of…

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  • Hope in Suffering,  Perfectionism & Shame,  Relationships & Peacemaking

    You can tell me a hundred times not to take it personally, but by that time, I probably already am.

    Years ago (I often hold sensitive topics that involve other people for months or even years before writing publicly on them because I always want to guard confidentiality), I received what can only be described as an extremely critical email from a stranger. For whatever reason, she felt quite confident in not only her own abilities and insights, but also in the appropriateness of her sharing those insights with me. This was not a conversation or even an invitation to a conversation—the was all one-directional: “Tara. I have observed this about you and I’m going to tell you a whole bunch of things about you now—all things that are weaknesses about…

  • Uganda

    God Answered Your Prayers with a “YES!” — Thank you thank you thank you thank you!!

    *** INITIAL POST FROM NOVEMBER 14 *** ASKING FOR PRAYERS FOR UPGRADES SO WE COULD BRING GIFTS *** Dear friends, In exactly one week, my twelve year-old daughter and I will be flying on the first flight of our journey to Uganda. If all goes well, our routing will take us from Billings, Montana to Salt Lake City, Detroit, Amsterdam, Rwanda, and into Entebbe. I am writing today to ask you to PLEASE consider praying for us to be upgraded on just ONE flight. Now. I fully recognize that I may sound like an entitled jerk and a terrible missionary to ask for such a thing. And maybe I am—but please allow me to…

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  • Fear Not!,  Perfectionism & Shame

    That Time I Utterly and Completely Failed and Caused a DISASTER! (Almost.)

    Countless descriptions exist for personality types. Some of us are “high strung”; others are “low key.” We can be “linear,” “drivers,” or “random creatives,” etc. etc. For those of us parenting pre-teens and teens we may even see some of them going in and out of these various personalities over and over again in the same day. Sometimes even in the same HOUR. (Some of you understand what I am saying there.) Of course, as Christians, we never want to use our personality type as an excuse for lovelessness. (“I’m an introvert, so I don’t introduce myself to people at church on Sunday morning.” Uh. No no no. That’s not the way it…

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