"i repent" Post From "Our Exceeding Joy" Blog

I love blogs.  I love writing them.  And I love reading them.  I've got a list of a few I like on the right side of this page.  But it is certainly not an exhaustive list.  Time is limited.  I don't have time to read 100% of each blog that piques my interest.  I don't have time to read any on a regular basis.  From time to time, if I have a few minutes, I go to one of the blogs I've bookmarked to catch up.

This morning I had such a little break in my day and wandered over to "Our Exceeding Joy."  It is a blog by a woman named Sarah in Austin, Texas.  I went to college and met my husband in Austin.  I know first hand what a great town that is.  But what initially got my attention is that Sarah is an adoptive mom like me. 

I love the description of her blog.  She describes herself first and foremost as "an avid reader and writer."  She says her blog is an outlet where she writes "about the things that stir my soul" such as "Jesus, adoption, or human-trafficking."  What a woman! 

I read a lovely post that Sarah wrote earlier this summer on June 8th.  It was entitled "i repent."  Take a read of what she wrote.  I wanted to share it because it is beautiful and inspiring.  But I also thought it was very apropos of the new focus of my own blog.

In this post, Sarah explored her former hard-heartedness and judgmental tendencies towards people unlike her.  I particularly loved the following passages:

It never crossed my mind that I could be wrong.
 

Maybe this response is because I grew up in a culture where there was this prevalent fear of being invaded by the homosexuals and the abortionists. We talked a big game, but when it actually came to believing that God could love all these sinners, we battened down the hatches and only let in like-minded people.
 

Maybe it’s because I was taught that it was more important to be right than to love.
 

Or maybe it’s just a symptom of being a fallen, broken person.

 

Sarah really hits the nail on the head.  In our modern culture, it seems like everyone is yelling at everyone who disagrees with them.  We don't listen to others who are different.  We are not open to learning.  We think we're always right, like we have a monopoly on truth.  How arrogant.  Even the disciples were continually misunderstanding Jesus's teachings though they were with him 24/7 for several years.

And as Sarah points out so eloquently, we've tragically adopted the attitude that being right is more important than loving.  What a powerful statement.  As Christ followers, we can't fault nonbelievers from embracing and living that attitude.  But those of us who purport to have read and accepted the Gospels, we should know better.  Being right is NOT more important than loving God's people, whomever they might be.

Take a read of the whole blog post, which is available at the link below.  Meditate on it and keep it in your heart as you go through the day.  Beautiful sentiments.  Yeah, Sarah!

http://www.sarahdrinka.com/?p=572

Having “Enough,” Not "All"

The following is a response to Dr. Slaughter’s article by Kara Baskin.  Ms. Baskin writes a blog at the Boston Globe site Boston.com and has one child.

http://www.boston.com/community/moms/blogs/24_hour_workday/2012/06/having-it-all-slaughter-atlantic.html

At times I think Ms. Baskin is a little harsh with Dr. Slaughter.  But many of her characterizations are very insightful.

Ms. Baskin describes Dr. Slaughter as one of “the elite” whose life “is all about economizing time, squeezing one more second from every day for preservation.”  Ms. Baskin writes that Dr. Slaughter and her “high-achieving peers” are “shuttling from obligation to obligation without any sense of true fulfillment.”  She summarizes: “Behold life at the top: One long astonishing feat of compartmentalization executed for fear [of] letting someone down.”  Ms. Baskin criticizes:

Slaughter is strong on mechanics, but there’s something missing from her story: a sense of joy. Before women ask themselves if they should work from home or opt out for a couple of years to have kids or wire their homes for video-conferences, why not take a step back and redefine fulfillment? Colleges prepare us to land the job, but they don’t teach us how to balance a checkbook. This is similar. Slaughter wants to tell us how to balance the marquee moments (Show up for work! Show up for soccer practice!) but not about actually living them. She is big on ideas but small on details.

Later, Ms. Baskin adds an interesting analogy:

I see this as an extension of the egalitarianism that has affected elementary schools across the country. These days, every kid is a winner at field day. Everyone gets the gold star, whether they deserve it or not—because, for some reason, the end game has become about winning.

This is field day for adults. Yet not every adult has to be crowned a “winner” in the classic sense. (And by the Atlantic’s definition, being a winner sounds pretty damn tiring.) In real life, not everyone will get the big promotion, land the fancy job, and produce the well-adjusted children. Men have dealt with this for years: In life, quite simply, there are trade-offs. Why can’t we accept that? Not every kid gets the blue ribbon at field day, and not every parent gets to be wonder-woman or superman. Doesn’t true fulfillment, a true sense of “all,” come with knowing that? This should be liberating, not a letdown.

Ms. Baskin concludes:

We’ve earned, after all these years, the right to ask that question. We shouldn’t feel compelled to fulfill some feminist obligation paved by our mothers to be and do it all because women before us didn’t have the option. The very point is that now we do have options; we can define happiness for ourselves. There is more to life, for some of us, than a briefcase and a baby. All is an old word. Enough is more to the point—having enough to make you happy and, hey, maybe actually enjoying the ride. Success is about more than just showing up.

I agree with many of the sentiments that Ms. Baskin shares.  But ironically, she too is really describing a female perspective that is privileged and relatively elite.  She is explicitly speaking for women who’ve been to college.  And implicitly, she is speaking for women who do not need to work for a living.  Ms. Baskin seems to condemn Dr. Slaughter’s comparmentalized, tread mill of a life unless Dr. Slaughter is actually enjoying it.  “[T]rue fulfillment” is the driver per Ms. Baskin’s perspective. 

But my critique of Ms. Baskin’s critique is that pursuing such fulfillment is a luxury.  Most people on this planet work hard to meet their basic needs (and those of their dependents).  Many parents would love to spend a day “calling in sick, eating cold pizza for breakfast, spending the day watching bad TV or playing with our kids,” but grumbling tummies don’t permit such indulgences.  Not everyone gets paid leave.  Not everyone has a permanent job.  Heck, not everyone even has a phone on which they can call in sick. 

 

 

 

1 Corinthians 12:8-11

A word of wisdom is given by the Spirit to one person, a word of knowledge to another according to the same Spirit, faith to still another by the same Spirit, gifts of healing to another in the one Spirit,  performance of miracles to another, prophecy to another, the ability to tell spirits apart to another, different kinds of tongues to another, and the interpretation of the tongues to another.  All these things are produced by the one and same Spirit who gives what he wants to each person.

Missionary Work in Uganda

Several years ago my husband came across a blog called “A Place Called Simplicity.”  He was just amazed by the posts and often told me about them.  Eventually I began reading the blog for myself from time to time.  It is available at:

http://aplacecalledsimplicity.blogspot.com/

The blog is written by a woman who is married to a pastor.  They really take seriously the New Testament command to care for orphans.  They have several biological children but have also adopted a large number of children.  The couple is white, and their adopted children come from a variety of backgrounds.  They are now a multiracial, multiethnic family.  Their family members have origins around the globe.  The blogger is open that she and her husband are at retirement age, but their children range from adults to a baby and everywhere in between.

The blogger and her husband have a real passion for the people of Uganda.  They have spent a lot of time there.  They particularly work with vulnerable children—some live on the streets and some are in orphanages.  My husband and I have been so moved by the experiences they share as they work with these children.

I encourage you to take a read of the blog.  The things memorialized in the blog are quite extraordinary.

Because of their love for orphans around the world, the blogger and her family have started a new ministry called “International Voice of the Orphan.”  The ministry’s website is at:  http://www.internationalvoiceoftheorphan.com/.

James 1:27

Religion that God the Father accepts as pure and without fault is this: caring for orphans or widows who need help, and keeping yourself free from the world's evil influence.

Amish Christians and Christmas

A while back I wrote about the book Amish Values by Suzanne Woods Fisher.  In her book, Ms. Fisher mentioned a blog called “A Joyful Chaos.”  It is written by a woman mothering young children and reminiscing on her own happy childhood in a close-knit Amish family.  It a beautiful blog, which I have enjoyed tremendously.  I recommend it highly.

However, for purposes of this blog and the recent themes I’ve been exploring, I particularly wanted to recommend an account the “Joyful Chaos” blogger shared of a typical Amish Christmas from her childhood.  The link below contains that post. 

http://ajoyfulchaos.blogspot.com/2009/12/christmas-memories.html

Again, like the account in Little House on the Prairie, the celebration of Christmas in the blogger’s family was not just about gifts.  It was about spending time together with those you love. 

Personally, I like that emphasis.  It seems to better honor the reason we as Christ followers celebrate Christmas.  And in my opinion, the gift of time together is the best gift there is anyhow.  Happy memories last longer than material objects.

In her post, the “Joyful Chaos” blogger describes having no money such that the material gifts that were given at Christmas had to be made by hand with items already in her home.  When you have to make your own gifts, that certainly puts a limit on how many you give and how extravagant they can be.  Forcibly, material gifts become less important in that context. 

I’m not sure that our family will ever limit our gift giving entirely to handmade items.  But it is something to consider.  At the very least, giving homemade gifts is something we could incorporate more in the future.

Psalm 66:8

Bless our God, O peoples, give Him grateful thanks and make the voice of His praise be heard.