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My Detective in Adult Violent Crimes – The Finest Law Enforcement Official My Attorney Has Ever Met
I just had the truly amazing privilege of meeting (and thanking) in-person the investigating detective on my sexual assault case. (The adult violent crime prosecutor’s office sent me to him back when I first reported the assault .) Even my attorney said that Detective Scott Morrison is the finest, most professional law enforcement official with whom he has ever worked. And I completely agree. Some people just make the world a better place. I am profoundly grateful.
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How to REALLY Help When Someone is in Crisis (Suffering Deep Pain)
A few hours after I posted my update about my sexual assault yesterday, it hit me that I shouldn’t have just stopped at the whole “it’s hard to know what to say or do” part of the discussion, because just before she went home to Glory after a long battle with cancer, one of my dearest friends (Ruth M.) gave me a list of ideas of things you can do when someone is in crisis / suffering deep pain. I’ve re-ordered things a bit (am I compulsive organizer or WHAT?) to group by genre … and the little subtitles are mine. (So blame me for the weird wording, not Ruth!) But if you have…
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Dave and Tara’s Bios
I coauthored Redeeming Church Conflicts with my friend and elder, David V. Edling. We met while serving as Certified Christian Conciliators with The Institute for Christian Conciliation. Dave is officially retired from serving as a Christian mediator, but I still accept occasional Christian conciliation cases as an independent contractor. David V. Edling Dave Edling is an experienced Christian conciliator who has worked with many conflicted churches. During his decade of service as a Certified Christian Conciliator with the Institute for Christian Conciliation, Dave participated in over 200 mediation and arbitration cases and worked with nearly twenty thousand Christians engaged in conflicts affecting churches of almost every denomination. Dave holds several…
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Bio
Tara Barthel: Twenty years ago, I moved from Chicago, Illinois (a city of 3+ million) to Billings, Montana (a state with only 900,000 people—livestock outnumber humans by 12 to 1!), to serve as the first female senior staff member of The Institute for Christian Conciliation, during its tenure under Ken Sande. At the time, I described myself as a “recovering lawyer” because I had left behind my practice in high net-worth (charitable) estate planning in order to oversee all Christian mediation-arbitration cases, conflicted church-organizational interventions, and the certification and ongoing compliance of all members of the international network of Christian ADR specialists. In 2003, I signed my first book contract…
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About Tara
Welcome! I’m really glad you are visiting, and I hope that you are able to find the information you are looking for on this site. Twenty years ago, I moved from Chicago, Illinois (a city of 3+ million) to Billings, Montana (a state with only 900,000 people—livestock outnumber humans by 12 to 1!), to serve as the first female senior staff member of The Institute for Christian Conciliation, during its tenure under Ken Sande. At the time, I described myself as a “recovering lawyer” because I had left behind my practice in high net-worth (charitable) estate planning in order to oversee all Christian mediation-arbitration cases, conflicted church-organizational interventions, and the…
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Speaking
[PLEASE NOTE: As of 2020, I am beginning to work on new books and speaking events related to helping churches as they serve traumatized members. (A recent sexual assault survivor, my childhood was also an 9/10 on the ACES Scale for Adverse Childhood Experiences.) So please consider the following descriptions of speaking events as being, in general, historical. And please stay in touch via Facebook if you would like to know when the new material is available. You are still welcome to submit an event inquiry form, of course. But please understand in advance that it would need to be a unique set of circumstances for me to accept. Thanks…
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Crying in Public (The Power of Adrenaline)
I had two bad (understatement) experiences flying home on Sunday. The first started out fairly low-level … an oversized man was pouring over the armrest between us on a tiny airplane. I tried my best to lean way out into the aisle to avoid having his body pressed up against mine, but it was to no avail. Plus, he wasn’t even trying to stay in his own space AND he was eating some huge, meaty, onion-y sandwich while drinking a soda while eating Cheetos. It was extremely gross and violating and I thought about trying to get the flight attendant to make an announcement to see if anyone would change…
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People are hoping to find you alive …
I cringed when I read the following poem by my friend and fellow Christian attorney, David Hogue: Traffic Honestly? I had to force myself to finish it because this topic is so horrific that it would take all of my focus in life if I let it. I also had to force myself to not give in to all of my temptations related to excuses for inactivity because this evil is just so overwhelmingly huge that I would constantly close my eyes and turn my head away from it if I gave in to my own devices. Can I stop child trafficking? No. Can I give money every month to…
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The Difficult Task of Declining the Sleepover Invitation
Last year I read a post by Tim Challies on why his family doesn’t do sleepovers, reminded me of an awkward conversation we had to have with some of our dearest friends in the world. It had to do with an invitation that one of our daughters had for a birthday party sleepover. As a general rule, we are a “NO SLEEPOVER” type of family. But we have some exceptions to this rule—basically, when we have known a family for years and years and we trust them and their children to be not only appropriate, but vigilant, re: access to and use of technology, nature of entertainment, length of unsupervised child-time,…
