Giving Advice

I am in a sometimes awkward position of having an adolescent child while I work with a couple hundred adolescents.
Professionally, I think I am pretty good at what I do.  I have the skills, the passion, and the dedication to keep me level-headed (for the most part) and consistent. I communicate well with adolescents (generally); [...]

Don’t Threaten Your Problem with Me!

Please leave me and mine out of your issues.  Unless, of course, we belong there.

Wesley, our cat, has been a bit under the weather lately.  Actually, I think Rachel has figured out that Wesley and I have about the same allergies.
We took Wesley to the Vet’s office last Friday, to get direction on dealing with [...]

LPI-Worthy of Your Support

I’m in El Paso, Texas, for the annual meeting of the South Central Jurisdiction’s Mission Council, the body that serves on behalf of the Jurisdictional Conference especially in the years between that group’s quadrennial meeting.
The Lydia Patterson Institute (LPI)has served as a very welcoming and gracious host for our meeting. LPI deserved to be better [...]

Can You Tell the Time?

I took me 2 days to notice the time on my atomic clock was wrong.
I had to replace the batteries in the temperature transmitter for our atomic clock on Saturday.  We received this clock as a Christmas present almost 3 years ago and this is the first maintenance it has required.
I slipped 2 new batteries [...]

Maybe Jesus was a carpenter…

We went around the table, each of us sharing something we got from the devotional that had just been read.  Toward the end, most of us settled into repeating something like: “Take your problems to God; God can solve any problem.”
The final girl said, almost under her breath, “God can’t solve every problem.”
Without thinking, almost [...]

Spiritual Consumption Disorder(s)?

I am reading David Walsh PhD.’s Why Do They Act That Way? for the class I am taking that is called The Adolescent Brain. In the chapter on Adolescent Mental Illness, under Eating Disorders, Walsh writes this:
We deluge kids with supersized portions of high-calorie junk food as we simultaneously glorify unhealthy, unrealistic thinness.
Because I am [...]

Blame

It is NOT my fault.  I didn’t get the email.
Wasn’t that someone else’s responsibility?
If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell,* to the unquenchable fire.* 45And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut [...]

We Are Missing the Point

“I hope I won’t go to hell for that,” said the teenager.
It broke my heart to hear this young woman who has grown up in the church, who is a leader and who, in all she says and does seems to “get it” still wonders in her heart if she will end up in hell.
Grace.
Jesus [...]

Control

When I get up earlier than Rachel, as I have this morning, I shut doors between the end of the house where she is sleeping and the end of the house where Wesley (our cat) and I are up and around.
Wesley doesn’t like this.  He complains.
So, in a long tradition of anthropomorphizing, I try to [...]

Questions or Answers?

It seems common in circles I move in these days for people/leaders/teachers to say things like “We don’t have answers, we just want to encourage questions.”
I respectfully disagree.
Not in the way I disagreed in my fundamentalist days (which was often not respectful), but I must disagree nonetheless.
I can’t won’t, and shouldn’t promise young people, or [...]