love to paint

 I just finished cooking the homemade noodles that my three teenagers worked together to make.  It's a family tradition that my mom started when I was little.  Christmas Eve dinner has always been homemade noodles, meat sauce, salad with Italian dressing, and French bread.  I have a cold this year, so that kids tackled the noodles on their own with just a little instruction from me.   For the past few days, my husband has given me many hugs.  I think this time of year is making him especially aware that I might not have been here.  I joked at dinner the other night with my kids that I'm thankful not to be a vegetable.  To me, it's meant to be a funny, yet serious joke.  But, I can see in my kids' eyes that it causes more pain than laughter in their hearts.   Life can change in the blink of an eye.  I started May 26th like a normal day tackling my household chores before heading off to a Memorial Day ceremony.  My husband was in...

Over the past few months, I have read the book "Forgive: Why Should I, How Can I?" by Tim Keller.  I rarely read books when they are released, but this one caught my attention and I wanted to read it. For the most part, I really enjoyed the book.  I found the text to be very helpful and it challenged me to look at my own heart and past experiences and responses.  It also helped me articulate and identify some of the changes I have seen in our culture over the past decade that have concerned me.  I would recommend this book--with two warnings. The first warning is that this book doesn't give a lot of attention to addressing abusive relationships and forgiveness.  I wish that had been more attention given to abuse and harmful relationships and what biblical responses to such relationships might be.  That would have been helpful, I think.  The second warning is my disagreement with Appendix D: Reconciliation Practices. In Appendix D, Keller walks the read...

A while back, I read the transcript from an interview on NPR.  The interview was part of their "Dear Life Kit" series.  The subject was a letter someone wrote asking advice about a situation that had previously happened.   The writer had uninvited a family member to their wedding when they replied late and informed the bride and groom that they were bringing two uninvited people with them.  My first thought when I read the word "uninvited" was whether the two people had an antagonistic relationship with the bride and groom.  No.  That wasn't the case.  There was a limit on the number of people they could have attend the wedding, but the writer didn't mention whether everyone else invited had replied and could come, so there might have been room for these two extra people.   Then, I read the advisor's verdict.  She declared that the bride had done the right thing but that it was natural for there to be a ripple effect and consequences in the f...

  This post is about irony that I never expected. Back in April, I taught a two hour class to a group of teenagers about Cyber Bullying.  Everywhere, you can find the message aimed at teens that they should speak up if they are being bullied.  But, what is Cyber bullying? "Cyberbullying is  the use of cell phones, instant messaging, e-mail, chat rooms or social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to harass, threaten or intimidate someone . Cyberbullying is often done by children, who have increasingly early access to these technologies."  from www.techtarget.com   Some people say cyberbullying by definition is only done by teenagers.  But, then we'd need another word when it's done by adults.  So, for sake of this post, let's consider cyberbullying to be bullying--harrassing, threatening, or intimidating done by adults, teens, or children to others using technology. Two years ago, my family experienced cyberbullying when the kids of a te...

 The internet is a funny thing.  Even if we don't think anyone will read what we write--and it's one of hundreds of comments, someone might.   I have always been very matter of fact about things.  I can say things without emotion that are shocking really.  It is my way of accepting them, acknowledging them, but not getting lost in them.   Pain has the ability to swallow us up, shape us, or refine us.  I want the pain I've walked through to be used by God to refine me--to help me grow and love others better.   One side effect of being matter of fact and being very honest about things is that it can lead people to believe that I've shared the whole picture when I've only shared a part.  Over the years, I've learned to be discerning.  There are some people that I have treasured as friends who I can really share not only the matter of fact things, but the emotions that I've wrestled with that have accompanied those matter of fact things. ...

 I learned last night that my father died earlier this week.   There are moments in life when you feel like you should feel a certain way.  You should have a reaction, yet you don't.  This is one of those moments for me.   When I got the news, I searched for an obituary, but found none.   Who was my dad?   He was a man with a large presence.  His physical presence was something he used to make himself known.  People either got along with him or they didn't.  And if they didn't, they either walked away or stayed silent.   He was a man who pulled himself up by his bootstraps after flunking out of college his freshman year.  He attended community college for a year, got straight A's, and then transferred back in and went on to graduate with a bachelor's degree.  I think it was in business. He was a man who always had ideas about how to make money, though he was very quick to spend on credit.   He was a man, who after div...

 A month ago, I was talking with an older woman who was making excuses for the decisions someone had made.  The excuses, I knew, were really the reasons for her sympathy for her bad choices.  I, too, felt sympathy for the choices that had been made and the situation that had resulted.  But, my perspective is a little different.  I also felt that the woman had choices about how to respond to her own pain. Years ago, my best friend had a friend who had been abused by her husband for many years.  My friend shared with me that her friend had become an abuser towards her children, taking her frustration and stress out on her kids instead of protecting them.  After the woman later got a divorce and entered her senior years, she couldn't understand why her children didn't like her or want to be around her.  She didn't recognize that she had become an abuser herself.   In life, when we are faced with stressful situations, it can be tempting to lash o...