The Meandering Mind of a Christian Woman

            Have you ever considered the phrase; eyes wide shut? There are so many social injustices in the world that it would likely take days to list them all; hunger, poverty, abuse, rape, murder, abortion, unemployment, inequality, debilitating diseases, pharmaceutical robbery, drug addictions, the 2 party system and on and on. If we sit back and think about all of them we can become quite depressed or even worse quite complacent. With so many causes in the world how does one take a stand for social justice? It has long been my belief that we should choose one or two on which to take a vigorous stand against. This tends to mean we close our eyes to the others; eyes wide shut. We know they exist but we do not take any stand.             It is so overwhelming! There are no plausible excuses for many of these causes, other causes present opposing views. I have my personal beliefs about these i...

            It has been a few months since my last blog entry. It was a summer of funerals for me. While I don’t dwell on grief I must admit it took the wind out of my sails so to speak. Yet, it is wind that I want to focus on tonight.             I have this association between wind and the Holy Spirit. It goes back a few years to when I tried to learn New Testament Greek. The Greek word for Spirit is “pneuma” which also translates to wind. It is so appropriate! We can’t see wind but we can see what the wind affects. As I write this Hurricane Matthew is slogging the southeastern coastline. It has been windy all week in Northern Illinois, I love the feel of air movement, I can tolerate heat if there is a breeze.             In medical terms “pneuma” relates to the lungs, more wind. If you have ever had the “wind knocked out of you” the con...

            Once again, I am sad, my uncle passed into glory yesterday. Yes, I am happy for his transition; he no longer suffers in his mortal coil with pain and can hear the glorious praises of angels without hearing aids. But I am sad for me and for my aunt and cousins who will feel the loss of his love and humor. What has dawned on me is that as a culture; we do not want to allow people to be sad. We always want to make things cheerful, why is that? Why are we so uncomfortable with sadness?             God created us with a range of emotions to feel and experience. Yet, we only want to experience the “nice” emotions; love, joy, happiness and the like. However, in a bittersweet way we need those lower emotions of sadness, frustration and anger to help us truly appreciate that when life is, in our opinion, good.             The bible and ...

So, we laid my mother to rest this past week. She had been declining the past four years with ever increasing dementia. We saw her go from being slightly forgetful to unable to operate kitchen appliances or set the table to unable to stand on her own to the inability to communicate in full sentences to the inability to be able to communicate at all and finally refusing to eat or drink and into a coma. Over the four years we prayed for her peace and for our own. It is painful to see a once vibrant woman lose herself and her memories and her words and in effect, her children when she no longer recognized us. We wanted her to pass away to heaven because she had already left us mentally. I told myself I was ready for her to go, especially as caring for her became more difficult and she looked past me or through me with no sign of recognition. I was convinced that my grieving process had already taken place. I have much to learn. I have to tell you, no one was more surprised than me when...

            This is an election year in America. One would need to live under a rock to not be aware of this. It is a disconcerting election year too. I find it more than a little difficult to believe that out of 318 million people, the 2 very best candidates for leadership have been located. We may see more than 2 names on the ballot but we all know it is near impossible for any of those to actually be elected. It is a bit frightening.             As a Christian I believe that God is in control and he will bring about his will. However, I submit for your consideration 1 Samuel 8 beginning at verse 6 “But when they said, ‘Give us a king to lead us,’ this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. And the Lord told him: ‘Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out...

            Chocolate. Just the word chocolate evokes certain emotions in people. The majority of people I know usually respond with a hearty yes or mmmmm and a smile. I do know a few people who do not like it, it’s alright though, we can still be friends. As I considered my response to a bit of chocolate yesterday it occurred to me that it isn’t just the taste; eating chocolate is an experience in taste, texture, aroma and pleasure. Personally, my preference is plain milk chocolate. I prefer to bite through it without interruption and allow it to melt on my tongue.             Then I made the comparison of chocolate to my faith walk; is that an experience too? What type of experience is it? Does my faith cause other to smile and crave a knowledge of what I have in my walk with Christ? Is my faith experience as rich as or better than a chocolate experience? Actually, I would say yes but I don’t ...

            Back in December I had a knee replacement and spent several weeks recovering while on pain medication. This partially explains my absence in the last few months. Today, marks a few memorable occasions in my life. Seven years ago today my husband passed away. Four years ago today my daughter was diagnosed with MS and admitted to the hospital. One year ago today my mother had a serious seizure that landed her in the hospital and accelerated her decline into severe dementia. Today, I ran my first 5K since my knee surgery. My goal was simply to not be last to cross the finish line. I met that goal and even did better than I expected.             As I ran, jogged, walked and wheezed my way through this race and pondered my goal; I was inspired to think about the ultimate finish line. My goal was related to my own pride.  As a lifelong Christian I have been glad that I am not the last...