Category Archives: Realizations & Ponderings

Self-explanatory

A couple of clips from my current cogitation

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I learned a new word today, can you tell?  I like it.  Cogitation:  thought or reflection.

  • John preached a message yesterday about how we often say, when caught in an habitual sin or mistake, “I can’t help myself!”  This can be an excuse that keeps us from really finding help out of those habits.  The behavior on the outside of us is really only a symptom of a problem on the inside of us.  If our heart isn’t pure or motivated by God’s Spirit then out come the boo-boos and trip-ups.  When I consider that truth about our hearts, then the phrase “I can’t help myself” is spot on truth.  I can’t fix my heart.  I can’t remove the smudge of sin or human weakness, but Jesus can.  Good ponder fodder, as I like to say.
  • Our family will possibly be making a move out west soon to serve God in the great state of California.  This isn’t a for sure thing yet, Continue reading →

Got Grace?

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I made a big mistake at work today.  It hasn’t happened for a while but it was bound to.  I get lots of projects going and something will fall through the cracks of my brain.  There are some pretty wide cracks and gaping holes in there, my brain that is.

To make matters worse, my error affects a friend of mine and he isn’t too keen on the situation.  I don’t blame him.  As I realized what happened I got that awful stomach-twisting, hard to describe nervous feeling go up the back of my back and neck and my heart started pounding a little faster.  Continue reading →

I don’t want to think about that today

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You may have noticed, if you’ve read my posts in the last few weeks, that my relationship with and parenting of one of my teenage daughters pretty much consumes my thought-life lately.

You know, parenting is really hard!  I hear all parents everywhere shout “amen!”  I have always loved being a mom and there have been other difficult times along the way, this is just a different type of difficulty.   It’s new territory for me and for John but thankfully not for God.

After a particularly challenging day and evening yesterday, I drove to work this morning I talking with God, Continue reading →

The God of Open Doors

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In a teenager’s eyes, sometimes the parent appears as a daunting obstacle to freedom, a task master laying down rule after rule in pure enjoyment of squishing every joy from her life.  This definitely colors the relationship between teen and mom or dad.  Her preconceived notions of automatic “no’s” and restrictions may cause her to just decide to do something without asking, ask with angry defenses standing tall, or buck and kick against it all like a wild bronco.  In truth, the parents are laying boundaries out of love.  They don’t enjoy holding her back from fun and friends.  They want the absolute best for her.  Helping her learn to live responsibly and submit to authority is key.  Staying within those lines drawn by her parents, she will actually experience real freedom.  It seems backwards but it’s true.

What if instead of thinking of God as a God of “no’s”, rules, and restriction we saw Him for who he really is? Continue reading →

Body Parts

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Need some practical ways to live following God’s heart?  Read Romans 12 in The Message.  I love it!  Today I was reading slowly and really only got through the first six verses or so.  I was trying to digest what each verse was really saying and I had a new realization.  Now it may not be new to you but it’s worth pondering anyway. Continue reading →

My Father, the Artist

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My dad is an artist.  He doesn’t paint pictures to sell or sculpt statues but he does tell detailed, captivating stories in a way that come to life in people’s minds when he teaches about Jesus.  He doesn’t build things but he does craft their yard into a healthy, lush, manicured garden of wide variety.  When he taught me piano lessons as a young child, he would draw pictures in my notebook each week so I could fill in little circles in the drawing with my practice times.  While our girls were young he would decorate birthday cakes for them according to the theme of their party that would rival any professional bakery’s work.  Continue reading →

Stay Squishy

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…dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.  Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.   Romans 12:1-2  NLT

My little brother, sister and I molded and created all sorts of silly stuff out of play dough together when we were little.  My sister had this amazingly fun set of hard plastic molds we used to make all sorts of foods and play restaurant on little plastic plates.  We’d end up pressing, rolling, pinching, cutting and flattening away for hours.  To get the best fruit or pizza or cheeseburger you had to push the play dough really hard so that it filled all the little spaces of the mold.

When my girls were little we acquired our own play dough toys that introduced them to the fun of moldable squishy stuff.  They even had a fuzzy pumper – do you remember those?  Continue reading →

Wise Mary Poppins

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Have you watched a movie you had watched a hundred times as a child and caught lines you never noticed before?  Or at least the meaning of those words had flown right over your head as you sat caught up in the story or what was happening on-screen?  Consider the story of Mary Poppins.  She was one wise gal and seemed to always have just the right thing to say.  You know, like “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down” and “well begun is half done” and my favorite:  “Close your mouth, Michael.  We are not a codfish.”  One of the things she said in the Disney movie that I missed as a child is “Enough is as good as a feast”.   In other words – stop your grousing, be happy with what you have and don’t ask for more.

Our human nature, from a very early age, causes us to cry out “more, more!” all throughout our growing up years and sometimes on and on, even when we’re “grown ups.”

Give a child a trip to the store and they want a candy bar, too.  Give them a candy bar and they want a slushee to go with it.  Continue reading →

Following Jesus is like Super Mario Bros.

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I was talking to a really good friend today, a mom of teenagers.  She shared something awful they’ve discovered happened to one of her kids when they were really little that probably influenced some of the not-so-good choices made by her child as a teen.  It’s a heavy burden on all of them right now – there’s anger, hurt, and weariness.  You see, this young person just weathered a lot of hard times and made tremendous growth.  He may have thought, “Whew!  That was rough.  Glad that’s over.  Glad God is with me and I’m closer to Him.”  Then this memory surfaced and the pieces of past abuse by a relative fall into place.  It feels like a set-back.  It might even feel to him like he’s back to square one.

As my friend and I talked about her son, I had a thought:  growing as a Christian and following Jesus is like Super Mario Bros.  Bear with me here.  Continue reading →

The Courage of Christ

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My family and I decided to attend the “Journey to the Cross” Good Friday event at our church, not fully knowing what to expect.

In the last few years, this type of observance seems to be becoming popular, replacing services in which we just sit, sing songs and pray.  Those are good things to do but I’m glad people have used their creativity to come up with ways for people to physically walk through, smell, taste, hear and feel the story.  The story of Jesus’ death and resurrection can become benign to those of us who have heard or read it year after year.  It may even cease to really affect us or make us think harder about the gravity of what Jesus did and experienced.

The “Journey to the Cross” is the first experiential-type setting we’ve been through in first person as if walking in Jesus’ place, sensing a tiny bit of what it must have been like for him.  We began by entering a room set up as the last supper, Continue reading →