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Sometimes There Aren’t Words
Sometimes there just aren’t words… when we sit with others in their grief. when others try to comfort us in ours. Sometimes there just aren’t words… when life comes crashing down around us. when darkness and despair close in. Sometimes there just aren’t words… when anxiety and doubt and shame condemn us. when regrets of the past rear their heads and gnash their teeth. Sometimes there just aren’t words… when betrayals bite and false denials scream. when the unrelenting hand of fear squeezes with clenched fingers. Sometimes there just aren’t words… when the world goes crazy. when people don't seem…
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Surviving Abortion: An Interview
“One out of every four women has had an abortion,” Jane* explained to me.[1] She sat across the table looking down at the coffee cup between her nervous hands as she shared her heart and the heavy burden she’d carried for a number of years—she was a survivor of abortion. No, her birth mother had not tried to abort her. She, rather, had aborted two babies many years ago. She explained the circumstances, the scenarios, and her guilt. I listened and cried with her, saying little. I gave her space to tell me the details of her story. And then I told her that I loved her and that Jesus…
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What Do You Regret?
Years ago I encountered a word of wisdom: “At the end of our lives, what we will regret is far more about what we didn’t do, than what we did.” And then recently, in a conversation about what “youngers” want to learn from “olders,” a colleague said he wanted to know what we regret so he can learn from our lessons the wiser way (observation) instead of the hard way (personal experience). So I’ve been asking. The answers fell in these categories: Missed Time and Opportunities I regret not spending more time with my parents and immediate family when I could. I regret not asking enough questions of my parents…
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Better to Have Loved & Lost?
Think about a time when you wholeheartedly loved someone and felt adored by them. As you think about that person––spouse, parent, boyfriend or girlfriend, sibling, child––how would you describe that love? What emotions or feelings come to mind? I think of: expectation, joy, excitement, purpose, belonging, peace, contentment, hope. As human beings, we cannot live healthy, abundant, prolonged lives without love. We are created to love. We long for love. We will do crazy things to show our love. But at some point in our lives, we will all lose love. What then? · A husband sits silently, mourning the end of 50 years with his beloved bride. · A…
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M*I*S*T*A*K*E*S – reponding to and living through them
According to Webster Collegiate Dictionary a mistake is “a wrong action or statement proceeding from faulty judgment, inadequate knowledge or inattention” with synonyms being: error, blunder, slip, lapse (forgetfulness, inattention as a cause). We’ve all made them – mistakes. That is why in first grade we had #2 pencils with strong erasers on them to correct our math errors and begin again. Horrors if you happen to get an eraser that made more black marks than it erased. The eraser allowed us to start over and begin again. Then came “white out” that you used on the old-fashioned typewriters to correct “typos.” Unfortunately there was no eraser big enough to…
