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Covid-19: In the Flood with David
How are you doing, ladies? Whether in Albania, or Jordan, France, the United States, India or elsewhere, we face a common enemy. Not Satan, the biggest enemy, no. This time I write of COVID-19. Unlike the onset of the tornado that slashed through my community several months ago, no warning sirens scream, except an occasional ambulance. We cannot hunker down in a basement or bathroom and wait for the storm to pass. Instead, most of us live in worlds shrunken to the size of our houses, apartments and gardens, and possibly our workplaces, isolated from family and friends. And still, like rising water, the enemy slowly floods community after community,…
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Theology of Self-Care
Is self-care selfish or unspiritual? Some churches and Christian circles say “yes.” And while today’s popular self-care strategies may have a bent toward self-serving interests, a biblical perspective of self-care is holistic, worshipful, and others-centered. Self-Care Involves All Aspects of Ourselves God designed us as complex, whole persons (Ps. 139:13–16). We do not—like a computer or machine—consist of parts, but encompass spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, psychological, and relational aspects in our intricate design. When we take care of ourselves, we can’t just target one aspect of ourselves. We need take a holistic approach to self-care. After my husband and I married, I moved from Lubbock to Dallas. In Lubbock, I…
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The Problem of Pain
Pain is not partial. It rears its ugly head in every home in every neighborhood in every city on every continent. It is not a respecter of age, race, or gender. Pain is almost always caused by loss. Pain can be brought on by a medical condition resulting in a loss of health. It can be caused by the loss of a relationship through a disagreement, a divorce, or the death. Sometimes a person is attacked physically, emotionally, verbally, or mentally and this develops a loss of safety. The opposite of someone attacking would be someone neglecting and this ends in a loss of nurture. The list could go on…
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Handling the Commotion in Emotions-Growing in Supporting Others
In 2015, Barna Group did research on factors changing women’s relationship with churches.[1] One of the factors researched was the amount of support women felt they received at church. Sixty percent of women felt no support or not much support at church. The lack of support women feel at church is a sad fact. I think we can increase the percent of women that feel support. One way to increase support for women is to become more attentive to emotions—our emotions and other’s emotions. Emotions can create commotion deep within. Because we are embodied souls, God uses our emotions to let us know what is going on in our souls.…
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GOOD GRIEF: Seven Steps to Embracing Emotions- #6- Protect Who They Are by Teaching Them How to Say a Healthy Good-bye
Life is a continual series of gains and losses. Even at birth, as we gain entrance to this world, we lose the soothing sound of our mother’s heartbeat. For months the rhythm of her heart has been the sound of safety and our first lullaby. In a very traumatic moment it is lost to the chaotic sound of our own first breath followed by our piercing cry for comfort lost. With every gain in this life some measure of loss is experienced. The price for having is the surety of loss. Loss is inevitable but it doesn’t have to be devastating. Staying in the womb is not a…
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GOOD GRIEF: Seven Steps to Embracing Emotions- #3 The Heart of the Matter
Being good is not the same as being godly. “They tie up heavy loads, hard to carry, and put them on men’s shoulders . . . They do all their deeds to be seen by people,” Matthew 23:4-5a In verse 15 Jesus exhorts, ““Woe to you, experts in the law and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You cross land and sea to make one convert, and when you get one, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves!” Do we settle for obedience even when we know it is done with an angry belligerent heart? If we are satisfied with obedience even when attitudes are wrong we have…
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Grieving- Throwing a Life Line in the Sea of Emotions
When Your Heart Feels Like Winter & Your Tears are Frozen Grief is unpleasant. It is a process of emotions that we each must pass through in order for our hearts to heal from a loss we’ve experienced. As an adult I have had to deal with grief in all shapes and sizes. My first big conflict with grief, though, came at the age of eleven. My mother died. Perhaps my words below will help you understand what I felt when I lost her. “It feels like the worst of winter has settled in your heart. It is not just the worst of any winter. It is like the worst winter…
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Are You a Spiritual Hoarder? Three Ways We Withhold Ourselves—and Our Stuff—from Others
Hoarder: “A word that describes anyone that feels the need to find, collect, keep, [or] pack any and everything because they do not know how to throw things away” (Urban Dictionary). Several years ago there was an entire TV series about hoarders. There are entire companies devoted to helping hoarders clean up. And there are even medical disorders related to hoarding. Innate within each of us—to varying degrees—is a desire to hold on to something. Hoarding is more than just stowing away our stuff in some dark closet. Sometimes it means we keep our deepest selves locked tightly within us. Here are three ways we withhold ourselves from others and…
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How Should We Handle Overwhelming Feelings?
What is the biblical perspective on how to handle overwhelming feelings? There are healthy and unhealthy ways to do that. The healthy way to deal with strong feelings starts with thinking wisely about feelings in general. Our pastor often says that feelings are real (we do feel them, often intensely), but they’re not reliable (they make terrible indicators of what is true). So we should acknowledge them, but not be led by them. Especially powerful, overwhelming feelings. Allowing yourself to be controlled by your feelings is unwise and immature. The flip side of that is our example of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. No one ever experienced the strength…
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Ups and Downs
The last month has felt like an emotional roller coaster—reaching exciting heights but plunging down quickly. After experiencing the high of a remarkable mission trip to Kenya, the low of returning to reality in the U.S., and the high of a belated summer vacation on the white sands of Florida, we returned to Texas for the funeral of a beloved family member who had pulled back from our family the past few years. Right now I am hanging on to a short season of calm on the ground, knowing that it may not last long. As I ponder the events of these few weeks, I am thankful that my…
