My Mentors in Lament

John Michael Talbot. He has quite a variety of musical styles, but many of them create an environment where it is easy to feel my sadness, while being filled up with the hope that God’s words bring. A lot of his songs are pretty close to quotes of various Psalms. I guess it is like [...]

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Being Happy and Not Smiling

Well, I got a soapbox button pushed tonight. Internet Monk has a very fun post about people who don’t even know him, but who feel the freedom to tell him he NEEDS to smile more. I found myself cheering as I read his post as well as the comments. One comment in particular stood out,
People [...]

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Lament as Invitation

One of the biggest differences I think between lamenting and complaining is that:
Lament implies an invitation to connect
while
Complaint builds a wall
That may be overly simplistic, so let me try to flesh it out a bit more. If I have had a rough day, and I am sharing all the details with you, I could have [...]

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Towards an Understanding of Lament

Recently a friend told me that he had read somewhere that what husbands hear as complaining from their wives is often actually lamenting.
That immediately resonated with me as being quite true. As I thought more about what lamenting is, the purposes and value of lamenting and what makes it different from complaining,  I remembered an article [...]

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Cheer Up, Part Two

In my original “Cheer Up” post, I said,
“Going into my anguish, not running away from it, is where God gave me peace. I found joy, not chasing after it desperately, but while meditating on sad poems and realizing that is the desperate context in which I choose to trust God.”
This morning I was thinking more about that. [...]

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Free Collection of Ruth Bell Graham’s Poetry

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is offering a commemorative gift of the book by Ruth Bell Graham, Sitting by the Laughing Fire. Here is the link:
http://www.bgea.org/RBG_MemorialGifts.asp  
uth’s love for the written word and her devotion to family and God often flowed together. Of this collection of her poems, Ruth Bell Graham wrote, “I have always loved poetry. [...]

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Cheer Up?

My life situation is very discouraging. And I am very often discouraged.
Which does not always make life with Jesus look very attractive, I think, to someone looking on. It raises questions (to myself and others) of whether or not Christians are any different. What about the Joy of the Lord? What about rising above our circumstances? 
I [...]

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Remembering Ruth Bell Graham

In my post, Emotions–True or False, I mentioned how after a couple of years of trying to fix my hurting emotions by correcting my thinking, I began to cry out to God to touch and heal my emotions directly. One of the people He used was Ruth Bell Graham. Her poems spoke me to me [...]

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What to Do about this thing called Prayer

Prayer is something I know I’m supposed to do, but I’m not really sure what it looks like or if I am doing it.
It is one of the areas I feel very inept at when it comes to discipling my children.  I know what I don’t want to teach them about prayer, but I don’t know [...]

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Favorite Books and Authors

Here are some of mine. I’d love to hear comments on any favorites we share as well as discover some of your favorites:
The End of the Beginning, Avi (a kid’s book, loved by my entire family; I like to think of it as my favorite philosophy book)
Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series (How do you [...]

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