Incredibly keen insights from GH (in Maryland) … I am going to mull on them for awhile. Happy Tuesday! Love, Tara B. “Dear Tara, I was too busy studying and preparing lessons for the young Moms’ class at VBS when your e-mail came inviting participation in your on-line survey. However, I am finally freer than I have been in a while and wanted to open some lines of discussion with you. I don’t know that I have a great deal to offer on the subject. Most has been learned in the school of hard knocks. However, having been involved in [women’s ministry] now for 25+ years, I have had many…

Sorry that I can’t remember the citation or where I read this article … but I thought it might be a blessing to you, so here it is: Donne and the Return Home Keith Cox “John Donne, the Renaissance poet, left us numerous treasures in his work. Recall that he instructed, “No man is an island” (Footnote 1: John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, xxvii.) and “Never send for whom the bell tolls, the bell tolls for you.” (Footnote 2: John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, xxvii.) Beyond these now famous lines Donne, through his works, has left us the witness of one who deeply understood and insightfully expressed the…

Many times when I’m talking and praying with women, I hear things like this: – “But that’s just the way that I am!” – “SHE needs to ACCEPT ME!” – “No one talks to me at church! I sit there every Sunday and NO ONE approaches ME. Same thing at women’s Bible study. So THAT’S why I’m not going ANY MORE.” I think about this a lot because I am so often tempted to say those EXACT SAME THINGS. And yet … and yet … – Didn’t Jesus come to save you from that “just the way that I am”-ness? (paraphrasing Patsy Clairmont) – Are we called to BE accepted…

Yesterday was my last day before our trip to run errands and try to get organized. I was doing pretty well until I had to swing by and ask a friend for a favor. I thought I had set everything up in advance and it was going to be no big deal … but do you ever have a conversation where the hair on your neck is standing up and you can almost feel the adrenaline charging the air? That was what happened to me. My heart was racing as I left and I was concerned for hours (as I continued to go to appointments and hop in and out…

The other day I was encouraging a friend who was struggling to be even moderately respectful to a certain person. Normally, this friend is cheerful, warm, gracious, and friendly—even to annoying people. (In fact, she was the person who taught me the phrase, ‘Don’t let stupid people make you stupid.’ That is—let it go. Don’t even burn any minutes off of your life by hyper-adrenalating your heart with the emotions of anger or frustration.) But this ONE person REALLY BUGGED HER. I am a LOT. So there I was reminding her of the very things SHE had taught me over the years—but she was still stuck. And then she said…

In his book, ‘The Life of a God-Made Man,’ Dr. Dan Doriani says this: ‘Discipline is the process in which bigger sinners attempt to convince little sinners to mend their wicked ways.’ I’m thinking about this quote a lot now as I read over the surveys that continue to come in and I learn how most churches do not practice church discipline; and how those that do are all-too-often quite harsh and condemning (rather than redemptive) in their discipline. I also think about Dr. Doriani’s teaching as I discipline Sophia (my two and a half year old). I always THOUGHT that I would ‘never’ say anything like, ‘WHY did you…

Yesterday at the gym, I saw a young man working out incredibly hard. He had muscles upon muscles but not in that (I think sort of strange) way that ‘body builders’ do … he was just INCREDIBLY strong. Normally, I would assume that he is just really into fitness; or maybe he is (sadly) caught up in the worldliness of trying to attract women merely for sexual conquests. But this guy was different. Why? Because he was wearing a USMC t-shirt. (That’s United States Marine Corps in case you are unaware.) And although I could be wrong, I made the assumption that he was working out so amazingly hard because…

In a recent issue of World Magazine (do you subscribe yet? It’s fantastic!), Joel Belz had a fantastic column on ‘Tender Toughness: It’s the kind of authority you’ve wanted ever since you were a kid.’ I was blessed by the entire column, but consider just a few excerpts/summary statements from the article: – (Quoting an editorial in the Wall Street Journal from fifteen years ago) ‘People want to be lightly governed by strong governments.’ – ‘Yes, that’s exactly what people want. We want our dad to be big and strong and able to do anything we can think of—except that when he deals with us, it has to be with…

Do you ever find it almost EASIER to forgive “big stuff” than to forgive little, annoying stuff that really doesn’t matter anyway? Case in point … our neighbor is a nice little elderly widow whom we like a lot. She has a professional lawn care company come in once a week or so to mow her lawn and keep her bushes all trimmed. One day, months (years?) ago, one of the workers rang our doorbell and said, “You may want to tell your husband that one of your sprinkler heads is broken by the side of the house.” I said, “Thank you!” and told Fred about it later that night.…

This morning I posted a reply on the Peacemaker Ministries discussion board and I was wondering what you guys would add to improve it. Here is the original question: Anyone out there attempting to deal with biological family issues after a lifetime of avoidance? The issues are so many and so tangled that it seems overwhelming to even get started. After years of division, it appears that there are incompatible belief systems, ineffective coping styles cemented in place, insecure identities with hundreds of “buttons” to push, lack of understanding the differences in personalities and giftings so celebrating diversity is out of the question and offensive styles of relating are the…