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Back Infections and Heart Infections
My husband Ray knew something was wrong as soon as he got out of bed. His lower back, where he’d had back surgery six weeks before, was wet. His t-shirt was wet. The sheet was wet. His fingers glistening with a strange wetness from reaching back to investigate, he asked me to check what was going on. I saw a rivulet of fluid pouring out of the top of his surgical incision. Something was really, really wrong. As I gently pressed the skin around the incision, pus kept flowing out. He had a serious infection under the incision. It had been hidden, but it literally rose to the surface of…
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“Christian Ethics Stuff” and the Death of Mother-Daughter Movie Icons
When we walked in the door from watching the new Rogue One Star Wars movie last week we heard the sad news: Distraught over her daughter, Carrie Fisher’s death, Debbie Reynolds had just died of a stroke. (Slight spoiler alert) We had just watched a digitally young Carrie Fisher/Princess Leia in the final scene of Rogue One. One of the rebels hands her electronic intelligence delivered at the cost of many lives. When he asked what she’s been given, she lights up a smile and answers, “Hope.” But in a tragic irony, sixty-year old Fisher died of cardiac arrest in the wake of years of the kind of…
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Mothers Have to Grow Up Too
A couple of months ago, I had to pick out eight pictures that represented the last 17 years of my daughter’s life. The yearbook staff at her high school kept sending me reminders of the deadline for the senior ad. So I did what I didn’t want to do—I pulled out photo boxes, inserted photo CD’s into the computer and I sorted through a lifetime of memories. There among the piles of “maybe,” “for sure” and “no way, she’ll kill me,” I remembered some of the advice I received as a young mother. Well, more like warnings than advice: Just wait, she’s cute right now, but when’s…
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The Fifth Opportunity
The Fifth Commandment states that we are to honor our father and mother in order that our days may live long in the land that God has given us (Exodus 20:12). This is the first of God’s commandments to contain a promise (Ephesians 6:2,3). To “honor” in the original Hebrew language includes the qualities of love, affection, gratitude, obedience, and respect. It is through honoring our parents that we first learn to honor all that are in authority over us. If children do not learn to honor their parents then they will likely not honor any in authority. Are you ensuring that your children honor their parents so that they will…
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Poopy Messes
Recently a friend called with an urgent prayer request; she’d been summoned ASAP to her son’s private Christian school and they wouldn’t say why. She was concerned about her eight-year-old anyway because of some traumatic life situations they had been weathering, and she feared that maybe he was acting out because of how difficult his life had been. Turns out someone had pooped on the bathroom floor and they had traced it to “Mark.” They pulled him out of his class and had him wait for his mother in the principal’s office. When my friend got there and found out what had happened, she said, “My son has occasional bowel…
